That night, as she sat propped in bed like a stuffed animal, high on painkillers and vodka, she listened to her mother talk about her father. She didn’t often speak of him, especially how he used to be, and Summer loved those stories. Things had been good before they went bad. Fighting to stay awake, she bit the insides of her cheeks as she listened to the good parts. Her mother told her she had her father’s nose and that his had been broken, too. “In a fight,” she said with a sense of pride in her voice. She wondered if her mother had been there for the fight and wanted to ask. Instead, she lay very still and listened to the emotion beneath her mother’s words. She’d heard love. In a way, her mother had given her her nose, a shape she now shared with her father. Why did he have to die? Why had they had to come here? Why couldn’t her grandparents have loved them better? With the way things were, everyone suffered.

When she was finally allowed to sleep, she settled into her pillow as her mother sat on the edge of her bed and stroked her hair.

“Mama...?”

“Go to sleep, love.”

“We have to get out of here.”

The stroking stopped. “I know.”

They tried to leave two weeks to the day after it happened.

That was the beginning of the end.

12

Now

“Ihave a surgeon in LA who could fix your nose.” Tara briefly made eye contact with Rainy in the mirror before she stood back to examine the feathered sleeves of her top. “He’s the best.”

“I can see that.” Rainy lacked the will to smile, so she made large eyes instead—I am so, so interested eyes. She knew from living in New York for a decade that not every nose was equal and that some of them cost more than a new car.

“Well, it wasn’t my nose I had done, just some other...work,” Tara rushed. And then, as if the need to explain was pressing on her, she detailed the work done to her face as she vigorously washed her hands. “So, noses—easy-peasy. If it was a break, even a long time ago, he can reset the bone.” She waited for Rainy to say something as she dried her hands.

“Some things are best kept broken.” She didn’t look at Tara as she shook the water from her hands and stepped to the towel dispenser.

It wasn’t the first time someone had mentioned the slight bend in her nose, but it was the first time they’d done it so rudely.