“You’ve been hiding these for, what, a year?” She motions to all of them. “There are so many. I cannot believe you’ve been letting this guy harass you for so long….” She tries to hold my eyes, but I look away, at the wall, anywhere but at the letters or at Lucy.

“Hey.” She reaches out and grabs my limp hand. “Hey. Don’t ice me out.” She pushes back against the headboard. “I don’t pretend to know how you feel about all this. I mean, I guess I thought I sort of understood, because I loved Jordan too, but…I think I was wrong. I don’t know. I really don’t.” She trails off and rubs her forehead, all weary. “I thought you were healing…starting to rejoin us in the world. You stopped drinking, you’re back in school. Zach seems like a good guy. But Jesus. This is bad, May. It’s very, very bad.”

I cross my arms tight across my chest and stare at the floor, blinking back the tears that keep filling my eyes. Something sharp digs into my palm, and I realize I’m gripping one of the letters so hard that the paper has cut my finger.

I watch the bright red spot of blood bubble up through my skin like it belongs to someone else.

All of a sudden, I’m furious. How dare she judge me: Lucy, with her perfect face and her perfect AA meetings and her perfect grandmother. Lucy, who has no idea what it’s like to have a brother, no idea what it’s like to hear him die. I whip my head up. She has a look of pity in her eyes and I want to wipe it right out.

“What would you have done with them?” I growl.

“Fuck. I don’t know. At the very least I wouldn’t have let them pile up without saying anything. All those times…all those times I asked how you were doing. All those times my grandmother asked you, and you just acted like you were okay, like everything was okay. All that time, you were hiding all of…this.” She shoves the letters toward me with disgust.