Mom looked at me, her eyes a strange watery hardness, like pumice stone at the bottom of the bath. “Do you know about this?” she asked, gesturing to a form on the table.

“She doesn’t know,” Alex mumbled.

I picked up the form and read it. It was a clinic form, parental consent for an abortion. An abortion? I had to read it twice to actually believe it. And when I realized it was for Alex, I almost wanted to laugh. Imagine it: all those years spent pointing at me for being the family fuckup while Alex was the one to get herself pregnant.

Her face was streaked with tears, desperate. I felt bad for wanting to laugh. Despite what my family thought of me, I wasn’t the bad one after all. I wasn’t the monster.

Alex looked at me then, and I saw the same little girl standing on that ladder the day Pim disappeared. Do something, her face said. But I couldn’t save her. Not this time. What she did with Tommy was her choice.

A part of me that had been closed for so long opened up. I wanted to reach out to her, hold her, but I didn’t.

“Does Dad know?” I asked. At the mention of him, Alex looked down into her lap.

“Not yet,” Mom said. “Good God, hasn’t that man gone through enough, lived through enough agony for a lifetime? Haven’t we all? And now. Now, this.”

“Mom, you can’t tell him. He’ll disown her,” I said. “He’ll burn down the Gunnarsson homestead. He’ll shoot Tommy himself.”

“Don’t!” Alex said, and suddenly her desperation and sadness transformed into rage, all of it focused on me.

“Ruth, I need you to drive your sister into town on Thursday,” Mom said. “You can do that for her, at the very least.”

“But, Mom, I—”

“You will do this. For me. For your sister.” She said it with such viciousness, she was practically spitting at me.

Another bucket of trouble thrown into the air, and somehow it was all still landing on me.

The outside of the clinic was horrible. Hordes of red-faced, sweaty women with banners shouted at Alex and me as we pressed through. I shoved a few of them. Jesus. It’s hard enough without that kind of baying in your face. Alex had been quiet on the ride in. She’d even apologized to me for having to come with her. I’d tried everything to distract her: music on the stereo, chitchat, sympathy. None of it worked. Once we got inside, she handed in the consent form.

“Is this your mother’s signature?” asked the nurse, flicking at the page with a glittery fingernail, her voice one bored straight line.

“Yes, ma’am,” Alex said.

“Do I need to call her and check?”