Looking at myself in the mirror, my under-eyes bruised blue, my shoulders curved from lack of sleep, I see someone broken. And yes, I might be orphaned, with no job, a life so easily swallowed up by someone else that I could easily just disappear, but somewhere deep down I have the grit, the stability my dad gave me that made him proud, and more important, made me proud. Anneliese hasn’t met that part of me yet.

I’ve texted her, telling her I’m coming over. The kids are back in school, and though Anneliese might have something on her schedule, she didn’t say she did. And I’m beginning to wonder if she even spent those long afternoons job-searching, or if that was a sham as well.

I remember what an old dance teacher said in high school and walk with intention, shoulders back, gaze forward, down the stairs of my apartment and to the train. The day is white, the sky almost snowy, though of course it’s only September, the glare forcing me to put on my sunglasses. My subway car is pretty full, but thankfully I find a seat. The tinny bop of a top-forty hit blares out of my seatmate’s headphones.

As the train goes uptown, then crosses the Queensboro Bridge, I rehearse what I’m going to say to her, all the punctuated remarks and pauses stacking up in my head like lines in a play. The train teeters along the bridge, and vertigo hits, only momentarily, as the thought of plunging downward shoots through my head. I grip the pole.

When I finally arrive at her doorstep, I’m tougher than ever, my nails pinching my palms as I buzz her apartment, then walk up to her landing. It feels like showtime, the tense minute before you enter stage left and meet the crowd, imbibe the audience, stare into the black lights and see stars, knowing that, perhaps, your whole future lies ahead of you in that mass of black, that glare of light.

I raise my finger to press the doorbell, but she opens the door before I can.

She seems smaller than I remember, though it’s been only about a week since I last crossed this threshold. She’s barefoot, wearing frayed jeans, a cap-sleeved blouse that’s also fraying at the edges, her hair in a topknot. And taking her in like this, after what I’ve learned, it almost seems laughable that she could seem this harmless. She’s so delicate, mousy even, her bony wrists and collarbones peeping out of her clothes. She looks so fragile, it seems like I could shatter her with one poke of my finger in her arm.