Stupidly, I can see, that surprises me, for I haven’t understood how far apart we must be. She has taken it all personally, and it wasn’t personal at all. Of course, in many ways she must still be a child, but I react fiercely against her anyway, protecting myself.

“Why do you assume I left you?” I ask, and she looks frightened again. “I didn’t leave you. You had nothing to do with it. It was just me.”

When she speaks again it is more calmly, with control.

“Then why did you go? If I wasn’t important, and Daddy and Elliott weren’t important, why did you go then? There must have been reasons.”

“I don’t know. I don’t recall. I think there weren’t really reasons.” I pause. “You’re eighteen, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve survived. Why don’t you leave it at that and go on with what you have? That’s the point, surely?”

Words are coming slowly, with great difficulty. I want to be emphatic, to make her go away, but I am not sure enough. It has been so long, there has been no need for words for such a long time; even my thoughts no longer seem to use them, but are sensations, flashes in the mind, and the remembering of words and the actual execution of them, forming my tongue and lips and throat so that they come out and can be recognized is an effort, and every part of the process must be painfully considered before a proper sound will emerge. I have not realized until now how far away from it all I have fallen. There has been no need to realize.