That’s when it strikes me. This is all one big slumber party to her. Never mind that it follows on the heels of her own mother’s death. Never mind that it means uprooting me—again—from everything that fixed me to this world so I wouldn’t just float away. Never mind that it is the unraveling of years’ worth of plans and watching everything I was working toward blow away like dandelion fluff in a stiff wind. Like everything else, she doesn’t take it seriously.

I set my fork down with a chink against the plate. “I’m not here to help you,” I tell her, my eyes narrowing.

She sits down slowly across from me, as if sudden movements might set me off. “Catia, I didn’t—”

“I’m not here because I want to be,” I clarify. “I’m here because there is nowhere else for me to be. Once there is, I’m gone. And stop calling me that. I go by Cat.” My voice is rising steadily, but I don’t care.

She sets her plate down and leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. “I know you’re angry.”

“You don’t know anything. You don’t even know me.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. What’s my favorite color?”

“Pink.”

“Maybe when I was six. Now it’s green. Dark green. What’s my favorite television show?”

She shrugs. “Cat—”

“It’s Dexter. Moony was going to buy the whole series for me even though she would have to add it to her confessional list afterward. What’s my favorite breakfast cereal?”

She doesn’t bother to respond. Her mouth gapes like a dying fish’s.

“It’s Lucky Charms because that’s everyone’s favorite, for Christ’s sake. You could at least guess.” No one can resist those colorful little marshmallows.

She takes a deep breath and blows it out through her nostrils hard and fast. “I’m not sure guessing would do much good since you seem bound and determined to prove me wrong anyway.”

“I’m just making a point,” I tell her.

“What? That I don’t know you? Maybe I haven’t been the one raising you for the last few years, but you are my baby, Catia. My girl. Even if that fact doesn’t make you very happy right now.”

She stabs at her eggs and takes a bite, chews, swallows. “And Catia is a beautiful name. I gave it to you because you were a beautiful child, the most perfect baby in the whole goddamned nursery. You deserved something better than Mary or Amy or Catherine. I will call you that if I want to.”

I glare at her. “Ten years.”

“What?”

“It’s been ten years, not a few.”

She ignores me.

“Your mother just died. Do you even care?”

Her eyes rise to meet mine. She looks away from me, her lips pursed.