Beth keeps texting me, has been for weeks. And I’m not mad at her anymore. Whatever anger I felt has dissipated, as I’ve grown accustomed to Anneliese and the kids, my bittersweet fury converted to pity. Beth is insecure. She always has been, especially when it comes to family. Her own parents were emotionless, always berating her to be better, do better, twist herself into a pretzel to be superhuman. Which just made her acrid, hurtful, with that tinge of meanness that has never quite gone away. She’s always been jealous of me, of how easily I was loved. Of how I knew exactly how to make people like me, while everyone else was scared of her, of her petulance and deep sighs of exasperation when she didn’t get what she wanted.

Maybe she was even jealous of my tragedy. She always wanted to be more interesting. But instead, she is exactly what her parents primed her to be: an upper-middle-class woman who graduated from college in four years and went straight to work at a white-shoe law firm as a paralegal. She’s studying for the LSAT now, and I wonder if she’s finally gotten her score up. These are the minutiae that interest me, that make me want to reach out again. But she’s negative energy. That’s what Anneliese says, at least.

And then one evening, a call comes from my boss, which is unusual because we use Slack or else text. I had forgotten her voice, the curt, punctuated way she speaks. “Meet me at the office. Ten a.m. No excuses.” And I know I should be afraid. But it’s as if all my priorities have shifted. Everything that used to be important before Dad died, before Anneliese, has crawled to the very back of my brain.

So I’m at peace when I walk into that open office space for the first time in months, my old coworkers glancing at me with bemusement, their eyes shifting to look at one another. Connie, who used to sit near me, is the only one who holds up her hand in a wave, an abbreviated gesture when she notices where I’m going, as if I’m walking to the guillotine.