Anyone but me.

I expected Mom to be the first to speak, but it was Felicia who leaned forward. “I’ve been thinking about our talk. There are some things I want to make sure you understand.”

“Okay,” I said and waited.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her yellow irises went a full shade darker. “I have an anxiety disorder,” Felicia said.

I’d known this for so long the statement shouldn’t have had an effect on me, but it was the first time I’d ever heard my aunt admit it.

“God,” she said, “there were so many days when I thought your mother was going to ship me off to the psych ward. Maybe she should have. The first time she stopped by to see baby Abe, the day after Brett brought me home from the hospital, she found me cowering with the kids in the hallway like we were bracing for a hurricane. Crissy was petrified and Abe was wailing from hunger, but I’d convinced myself a stranger was prowling the neighborhood. The hall was the only part of the house without windows. The only place that felt safe.”

This story was new to me, but not surprising. Many times I’d overheard Mom try to soothe Crissy and Abe when they were little. Your mother loves you so much. She doesn’t ever want to lose you.

“It had complete control of me,” Felicia went on. “Made me do things I’ll regret until the day I die, things I could never have imagined myself doing. That’s the nature of the disease.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. That was a lie. A month ago, I’d shot a witness because I allowed residual feelings of fear to interfere with my work. PTSD was an anxiety disorder, too, and I wasn’t myself when in its clutches.

And yet, a voice in my head said, No. You saw the pain she inflicted on her kids. It isn’t the same. Felicia’s struggle was undeniable, but the hurt it caused wasn’t limited to outbursts of violence. Between the emotional neglect and her constant diatribes about the dangers of their world, she’d tinkered with their heads all their lives. There was no comparison between what Felicia had done and the inner conflict I called my own. Was there?

“I don’t know what you see when you look at me,” Felicia said, “and I’m not sure I want to. When you were young, your allegiance was always to Abe. You tried to protect him from me, but I hope you know I love him.”

I pictured him in our kitchen. All those pizza nights with the cousins. He was desperate to get out of his house and into ours. It must have felt like escaping a battlefield and stumbling, stunned and blinking, into a meadow.

I love him, Felicia had said.

“I’m better now,” she went on. “I’ve finally got the right cocktail of medications, and I’m seeing a good therapist. I’d give anything to go back in time and do those things sooner, be the mother I should have been, but I can’t.” Felicia turned her head to look at her sister, and Mom gave a nod. Go on, it seemed to say. You can do it. Felicia nodded back. “Please believe me, I wasn’t right in the head back then, not at all. But I had nothing to do with what happened to Brett.”