In my mind—in the stories I’d made up for Melanie when we were little—that was always how it went. Our father fell in love with our mother a long time ago, when she was still young and beautiful. Long before the drugs ruined her body and fried her brain. She was his weakness—the only flaw in a kind, caring man who’d loved us until the day he’d died, when Mellie was still a baby.

I had no memory of him—nothing to contradict the story the way I told it.

“Your dad?” She laughed again, as if the very concept were ridiculous. “Nina, you never had a dad. I married Oliver to keep the Church out of my uterus, but he wasn’t your father. Your father was a very special man with a very special gift, and it took me almost two years to find him. I danced and touched and flirted, and he made a small genetic donation, and Oliver—Melanie’s father—never suspected a thing.” Her gaze was colder and harder than I’d ever seen it, and then suddenly it was blurred by the tears filling my eyes. “Oliver wanted you to be his. I needed you to be someone else’s. But ultimately, you were mine.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are mine.”

My blood boiled in response to the lies she was spewing. They were lies. They had to be. “You’re crazy. The drugs have finally baked your brain.”

“I’m not an addict, Nina.” The kettle whistled, and she took it off the burner without a pot holder. The handle left an angry red mark on her palm, but she didn’t seem to feel it. “Drugs didn’t do this to me.” Her sweeping gesture took in her entire body. Then she turned and stood on her toes to pull a box from the top cabinet, and her shirt rose to reveal emaciated thighs.

I turned off the burner while she set the box on the countertop, flipped open the torn cardboard lid, then pulled out a white pill bottle. “Vitamin E, for my skin and my immune system.” She set the bottle on the counter, then dug out another one. “Vitamin C, to regenerate antioxidants and firm up collagen. Can’t you see how well it’s working?

“Vitamin K.” She set another bottle on the counter, then dug out a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. “Calcium. Niacin. Vitamin A. The rest of these you’ve probably never heard of.” She tilted the box so I could see another half-dozen bottles inside. “The drugs I take are to slow what’s happening to my body, and I’m paying on credit. Which means that someday I’ll have to make good on my debts. You would have figured it all out by now if you were smarter. Your sister would have figured it out if she were older. But I managed to create the perfect combination of youth and ignorance with the two of you. I probably couldn’t do it again if I tried.”

She looked at me then. Really looked at me, studying my features like she hadn’t in years. Maybe ever. And somehow, her scrutiny was even scarier than her neglect had been. “You were perfect, and you never even knew it. You were my perfect, lovely little shell, just waiting to mature. Beautiful on the outside. Flawless on the inside. Until you weren’t.”