I drop the card on the bed and curl up beside it. Hearing from Dad is a punishment now. All it does is dredge up bittersweet memories I’d rather forget. Downstairs, Mom has moved on from her work to checking the windows, latching and unlatching, counting to herself in a murmur I can’t make out but know by heart. Unfortunately, she is not an equation or a problem that I can reason out with logic. I mash my face into my pillow and think about what Will said a while ago about asking Dad what to do about her. I can’t avoid my dad’s email much longer, especially now that I owe him the obligatory thank-you for the card.

So I sit on my bed with my laptop and fill an hour with false starts:

How could you leave me with her?

Hope your life in London is super awesome without me.

Do you have a new family yet? Are they better than the one you left behind?

I finally settle on a few sentences along the lines of “thanks for the card and invitation,” and “I doubt I can visit since Mom needs my help all the time. Was she always like this?”

I wish I could remember more about the time before my parents split up, but my memories of the divorce are fuzzy and dim. She counted sometimes, but that didn’t seem strange; in kindergarten, we counted things all the time. But when you live with someone every day, it’s hard to see the slow ways they change, the way the walls keep closing in until you realize you’re trapped in the box of safety they’ve built around you. Did I just fail to notice how bad things were until Dad took off for England? Or did they get worse because he left?

I hit send on the email, then spend a while online searching for things like “help mom with OCD,” but just like every other time I’ve searched, there’s far more information about children with OCD than parents. I only find one article that has any advice, suggesting that family members should try to avoid accommodating OCD or participating in rituals. How the fuck am I supposed to do that when helping her complete them is sometimes the only way I can get her to calm down? Refusing to participate would probably lead to accusations that I’m not doing what needs to be done to help the family.

But what if it would help her for me to stop?

I don’t know.

Eventually I fall asleep in my clothes with my lamp on, curled up next to my backpack like it might offer the comfort of another person instead of just books stabbing into my spine.