“Do you have any idea what youth is worth?” she demanded, as if she’d already forgotten the tea.

I shook my head and backed into the living room when she stomped closer, her eyes wild, wisps of pale hair floating around her face as if they were so thin gravity couldn’t touch them.

“Gold, Nina. Youth is the gold setting, and innocence is the glittering diamond in the center. Throwing your own away wasn’t enough, was it? You had to let her do it too. This is your fault.” She wagged one bony finger at me. “All she had to do was keep her skirt down for a few…more…years.” My mother turned back to the kitchen and threw open another cabinet. “She would have been enough to keep me going. To keep us going. But now she’s worth half the listing price. Worth nothing, if we can’t get that thing out of her.”

“What? Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I understood the individual words, but they made no sense together. No sense I wanted to see, anyway. Yet with each word she spoke—each mention of worth, and listing price—the goose bumps on my arms grew taller. Fatter.

“Of course you don’t. Because she’s the smart one. You’re the fighter and she’s the thinker, but none of that matters now. It never mattered, but you never figured that out. Because you’re not the thinker. But that’s okay, because I don’t need you to think.”

She spun again, so fast she should have lost her balance, but she didn’t fall. Somehow, though her thin frame lacked both grace and stability, her balance was flawless and her strength was…terrifying.

What the hell was she on?

“Keys…” She opened drawer after drawer, only to slam them shut again when she couldn’t find what she wanted. “Where the hell are my keys?”

“Mom, you can’t drive. You’re…not well.”

“Not well!” Feverish laughter bubbled out of her mouth and spilled into the room. It seemed to bounce off the walls and strike my skull at exactly the wrong angle. “I’m not well. I haven’t been well in a long time. But that’s about to change.” She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, her gaze pinned me to the spot where I stood. “Fine. You drive.”

“I can’t.” Because I’d sold the car. “Why?” I demanded through clenched teeth, when the anger and confusion and fear became too much to think through. Too much to breathe through. And I only realized in retrospect that I wasn’t asking about her tantrum, or about what she was trying to make Melanie do. “Why did you have us in the first place? You don’t want us. You don’t even like us. So why the hell are we here?”

My mother turned to me slowly. Her eyes flashed again like they had in the hall, as if they were reflecting some light source I couldn’t see.

“He made you, didn’t he?” I guessed in a horrified half whisper. “My dad. He made you have us, didn’t he?”