“When I couldn’t get you back, I gave up. The medicine made me tired. It made me feel disconnected, like I was wearing a glove over my brain. I gained a lot of weight. I started drinking again. I was young still. I wanted to go out. I wanted to find someone. You weren’t there. When I came home at the end of the day, when I woke up in the morning, all I could see was the absence of you. I didn’t want to live. Not like that. It wasn’t long before I met someone I thought I could trust. We left together, tried Texas on for size. Away from my doctors, I let my prescriptions run out. I stopped therapy. None of it seemed to matter anymore. If I wasn’t doing it for you, why would I do it at all?”

“For yourself.”

“Maybe. I hated her for a while. And then the hate turned inward, and I hated myself more. I was never enough of a reason.”

“So, what changed?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re obviously better now. You take meds, right? You have a doctor? I wasn’t in the picture. What changed?”

She smiles in a sad, soft way. “You were getting older. I knew someday you would turn eighteen. You would leave home. I wanted you to find me ready. I wanted a chance to be your mom.”

It settles over me like sawdust, piling up on my head and shoulders, itchy and suffocating. I am what rests between her and madness. A firewall for mania. It is a responsibility I don’t want. With Moony gone, who will be my firewall?

XXV.

WE PULL UP TO THE CURB IN FRONT OF THE TINY HOUSE I called home for the last ten years, and I am amazed at how little has changed. I almost expect to walk in the front door and hear the television playing, smell pot roast on the stove, and see the gleam of freshly polished floors. The realtor is waving from the front steps, her smile too white to be natural and her hair unmoving in the breeze. We get out and I skirt the car, take two steps onto the lawn, and freeze.

My mother practically skips up to the realtor with an outstretched hand. “Shelly! Hi! Thank you for meeting me here.”

“Oh, no, don’t be silly. The pleasure is all mine. Shall we go in? I’m gonna need your John Hancock on a few of these.” She waves a stack of papers at us.

“Yes, absolutely.”

Shelly holds the front door open for my mom, but still I don’t move. After a second, Mary sticks her head back out. “Cat? You coming?”