Now I don’t have time to make things right between us. To bury what happened in March and stop blaming him for what that day did to me. I need time. More time. But it’s run out.

This is a nightmare. I’m living in a nightmare. Jesus, somebody wake me up.

“Why can’t we just stay here?” I say. “I mean, can’t Gram and Papa live here until … like, graduation or something?”

“It’s not good for Papa’s health,” Nora says. “It gets too cold at night. His rheumatism acts up. And I think it’ll be too much for them. They’re getting on, you know. They don’t really know how to live with teenagers.”

Mae clears her throat. The faintest blush spreads across her pale-as-milk cheeks.

“Is there…” She frowns, like she’s translating words in her head. “With my adoption. Is there any way that social services could—”

Aunt Nora stares at her. “No. Oh, Mae, honey, no. Have you been worrying about that?”

Mae looks at her hands, nods.

I feel like an asshole for not knowing she was stressing about that stuff. For not asking. Has she been worried this whole time that she was going to be taken away?

“I’d never let that happen,” I say. “Ever.”

“I was just … curious,” she says.

“You’re a Winters,” Aunt Nora says in her firm lawyer’s voice. “And my niece. And your uncle and I love you so much. It’s going to be okay, Mae. I know it doesn’t feel like that, but it will be. I promise.”

Her voice trips, stumbling in that way all of us do now.

Uncle Tony reaches out and squeezes Mae’s shoulder. “When we get to Boston—”

“No.” I grab the throw pillow Mom helped me make for a YMCA quilting class my counselor made me do when I first got sober. I hold it like a shield. “I’m sorry, but we can’t leave. I mean, this is crazy. We’ve been here our whole lives. It’s our senior year—”

“We have nowhere else to go, Nah,” Mae says. Her voice is so soft.

All my sympathy for her suddenly evaporates. I am so fucking sick of her these days, I really am. I used to have a sister. Now I have a narc jail warden.

“Can you just stop being logical for two-point-five seconds and have my back?”

Nora frowns. “Hannah—”

“I’m thinking about what makes the most sense for us,” Mae says. “We can’t stay here alone—”

“You’re not Mom, so stop trying to be.” Her face scrunches up and, for a second, I think I’m about to make my sister cry, which is impossible, but then she nods.

“Okay.”

The room is very quiet. Why do rooms get so quiet after I say things?