“Yeah,” I say, but what little gravity I have, I’m losing quickly, blood rushing in my ears, my vision tilting, because when has anything ever been up to me? I rake my hair back, try to breathe. I should be used to this lack of gravity. I haven’t been on stable ground since my mom lost custody of me. Seven years is a long time for anything, let alone not touching Earth.

– 3 – Willow

I wouldn’t say I stall making my way into the house, but it’s safe to say I take my sweet time.

My mom’s house is what Bea’s mom calls le moderne, big, open floor plan, lots of glass and steel, a color scheme that ranges from white to light gray, and smoothly poured concrete floors that—despite their built-in heating system—never quite seem to warm up. My mom put a huge amount of work into her new house, and objectively, it’s gorgeous. The only real issue for me is that besides my bedroom, it feels like I’m wandering around in a stranger’s house. Two years into living here and I still feel like I’m waiting to go home.

As I pass through the hallway, I do my best to avert my eyes from the article my mom recently had framed and hung near the entryway. Last December, my mom won a Businessperson of the Year Award from a big event-planning magazine, and they’d done a shoot in our house, which is where she does most of her planning. I’d been moved when she’d asked me to be a part of it, but then during the shoot, the photographer had positioned us in the kitchen and told us to “Just do whatever normal mother-daughter things you do, maybe bring up some inside jokes?” and we both sort of stood there like paper dolls until he took pity on us and started directing the shot.

It was brutal.

The end results were nice; my mom and I look almost awkwardly similar in our magazine clothes, but every time I look at it, I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The photo shoot had made it hard to ignore the giant, growing chasm that existed between my mom and me because the photographer had named it. Just do whatever normal mother-daughter things you do. And those things had turned out to be… awkward conversation. Weird silence.

People sometimes ask me if I’m excited about my mother’s success, and while I’m proud of her, it doesn’t feel like it has much to do with me. If anything, it makes me feel like I’m observing her from afar. We no longer exist in the same sphere.