For as long as she stayed on the ground I stayed at the window and watched. Two cars drove by, and each time the driver gave my mother a passing glance. When she finally got up, she wiped her hands on her jeans and then wiped her eyes, and she came down the driveway. She must have seen me there watching her from the window, but she acted as if she didn’t, and when she came into the house she went right back to the sink without a word or a sniffle.

Mom finished the dishes and then she cooked. Moose meat, peas, and boxed couscous. When the food steamed from the sideboard, Mom made herself a plate and set it next to the microwave for later. She still didn’t say one word, and it looked like she still had tears buried somewhere in her.

At the kitchen table, I blew on my hot food, but I hoped it’d stay hot forever because I wasn’t hungry. I turned in the chair and looked at Mom wiping down the sideboards.

“Mumma?” I said. She didn’t look at me, and I recall needing her to look at me.

“Mumma?” I said again.

“What, gwus?” She sprayed the counter with cleaning solution.

Ever since I’d met Frick, since he’d moved in those five years back, I always felt his anger or passive-aggressiveness was due to my existence. And while I could often combat that feeling with Mom’s happiness, with her cooing over me or her comforting reassurance about whatever childlike anxiety I had about some issue, some worry, her distance that day left me too alone. But if I had known that that was growing up, I wouldn’t have asked: “Is he mad at me?”

Mom’s reaction didn’t settle me. She burst out crying again and didn’t try to hide it. The last time Mom cried twice in one day was when my sister lost her child. No, she cried twice in one day too when my sister lost another one and up and left, leaving behind only a note that read she’d lost something and that she was off to find it.

I stood, nauseated. I asked her what I had done.

She came over and sat me back down with wet hands. “You didn’t do anything. Just eat.”

That she looked at me was enough to calm me. Still, I wasn’t hungry, at least not for food. Mom finished the sideboards and went to her bedroom. When her door clicked shut, I took my food, covered it, and set it next to the microwave by Mom’s.

I fell asleep on the couch with the TV on mute, and I woke up in my bed. It was around dawn, and a pale-pink light glowed outside, lighting my bedroom. Hushed voices came down the hallway from the kitchen.

“You’re going to have to tell him, doos,” the voice said. It was Grammy.

“He’ll leave if I tell him,” Mom said.

“Good,” Grammy said. “He’s no good.”