We got started on the dishes, me washing and Murphy drying, both of us working in silence. After a minute Murphy finally asked the question I’d been waiting on all night.

“Where were you last night?” she said.

“I was at the tenant house,” I said. “At a party.”

“Why didn’t you take me with you?” she said.

“I don’t know, why didn’t you ever take me with you back home?” I said. “To anywhere you ever went?”

It came out meaner than I’d meant it, and I could tell I had caught Murphy off guard. But it also felt really damn good to say, to finally let that out.

“Because I didn’t think you’d want to go.”

“Is that right? You thought I just loved staying home by myself all the time?”

“No,” she said. “I guess not.”

“You didn’t bring me because you were embarrassed of me,” I said. “Your weird brother with the visions, all fucked up in the brain. I bet you never even told anybody you had a brother. You just pretended I didn’t exist.”

“That’s not fair,” she said.

“Seems pretty fucking fair to me,” I said.

“Oh yeah, totally,” she said. “I mean, you get to frolic in the meadows all day, having your little visions, while I do all this manual labor, working my ass off, and it’s exhausting. You get treated like royalty by Grandma and by this whole fucking weird-ass town, and all I do is get shit on.”

“Grandma loves us,” I said. “We’d be lost if it weren’t for her.”

Murphy slammed a cup down on the countertop so hard she cracked it.

“What is with you? It’s like Grandma has you wrapped so tight around her little finger you’ll do whatever she wants.”

“Look,” I said, “maybe you can’t understand how I feel because life has always been good for you and everybody likes you. But my life was shit back home. People hated me, Murphy. I didn’t have any friends at all. I couldn’t sleep at night. I had these dreams, these visions, and I never understood why, not until I came here. Grandma is the first person in my life not to treat me like a freak. Mom didn’t even like me.”

It was true. I was speaking honestly to Murphy for the first time in my life. It felt horrible, but it felt good in a way too, like a release, like I’d had this scream buried deep in my chest my whole life and I was finally letting it out.

“Mom loved you,” said Murphy. “You know that.”