I wanted to know what she meant, but I thought it best to let her think.

Several minutes of silence and driving later, I looked out the window to see us pull up to an apartment building with a meager little playground outside, illuminated by one flickering streetlamp.

Shanti turned off the engine and sighed back into her seat, staring out my window. She pointed at the building. “My mom lives there.”

Uncertain how to respond, I said, “Okay…”

“I haven’t lived with her for three years—since I was sixteen. She didn’t really want us.”

Damn. “She didn’t?”

Shanti shook her head. “Our dad was never in the picture. He moved back to China after they got divorced—when we were little. And my mom’s boyfriend’s an asshole. Like, the kind that talks with his fists.” She glanced at me, to check my reaction, I guessed. I just gave a slight nod. I didn’t really know how to process this information. Shanti looked at her hands, still on the steering wheel, and continued. “They’ve been together since I was fourteen, Kat seventeen. Eventually, Kat would get into it with him, trying to defend Mom. And me. She was always so strong. I think she’d been secretly working out, too, trying to get stronger. But no matter what, Mom would always side with Rick.”

Her voice cracked and she paused. I didn’t want to mess anything up by saying something insensitive, so I just did what Dr. Hoang sometimes did—I repeated back what Shanti had said, hoping it would prompt her to say more. “She sided with him?”

Shanti nodded. “Yeah. Kat got so sick of both their crap, she saved up some money and one day she came home, slammed Rick up against the wall, told him and my mom they could pummel each other if they wanted, and practically lifted me off my feet to rush me out of there.” She scratched at something dried and crusty on the steering wheel as her cheeks became wet.

“You never went back?”

“I did. Once. I was worried about my mom even after everything she’d put us through. This was months after we’d left, and our lives were just getting to some kind of normal, but I guess I thought—she’s our mom. She must miss us, right? Kat didn’t want me to go, but I begged her to come with me, to give Mom one more chance. Kat wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t want me to go by myself, either. When we got there, though, my mom wouldn’t even open the door. Just yelled at us from inside to fuck off. Literally. Those were her words. ‘Just fuck off.’ It broke my heart, but I think it broke more than that in Kat. She was so mad at me—”