“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t even sure why I was apologizing, except maybe for putting everyone out, making everyone worry about me. I’m an honor student, top of my class—smart and always lauded for having it together. The mighty had finally fallen, and I’d done it hard.

Like, right onto my face before getting crushed by one of those cartoon ACME anvils hard.

“Stop apologizing,” she said. “You’ll get through this. Your mother did, and I did before her. It’s not easy but it’s not insurmountable, either.”

“You didn’t have Mom until you were thirty, and you were married.”

Mormor sniffled, her hands, thin and riddled with dark blue veins, clasped together over her flat stomach. “I had an abortion, in Sweden in the seventies. I’d gone to live with family awhile,” she said. “There was a boy, I loved him, but I was naive. Young women are often naive. Trusting everything will be fine without realizing you have to work for fine. We make our own fine.” She paused. “Frankly, I find it amazing our species continues. We’re all idiots.”

“Yeah, I’m an idiot,” I admitted, my fingers sweeping over my throbbing temple. On top of the nausea, I was getting a killer headache, which was probably tension, but who knew with my freshly announced tenant. Weird stuff was, and would be for a long while, happening in my body. “Ugh. I feel so stupid. Like, I was so careful with Aaron, but one night, and one bad choice—”

“That’s all it takes. One choice. Bad is relative. If it’s any consolation, it’s a mistake that’s been made a million times before and will be made a million times again. Such is the way of youth and life. But you will get through it because your mother and I will help you get through it. We’re Larssen women. We persevere. It’s what we do.”

Except I’m a Rodriguez, my brain screamed. What if we don’t persevere?

I didn’t say it aloud. Mormor wouldn’t brook a whiner, so instead I snuggled into the bed pillows and closed my eyes, hoping I could drift off and vacate reality for just a little while. Mormor took the hint, closing the bedroom door behind her and leaving me in the dark, alone. It should have been a time for rest, but my brain was on fire, the possibilities, the what-ifs, the what-do-I-dos endless. I felt like one of those babies who cried because they were overtired but refused to go to sleep. I wanted to, willed my body to, but it wasn’t happening.