Amy didn’t immediately respond.

I wished there was a window. I wished there were sounds elsewhere to focus on.

“I think there’s no right way to answer that question,” Amy said.

“Okay,” I said. My hand clenched the other. “Do you think you’ve been fair, here?”

“I’ve tried.”

“Keeping me prisoner, cornering me?”

“We’re not—let’s not be combative. Please. We were being civil.”

“Okay,” I said. One more measured out tightrope walk of a word.

Amy sat up straighter, looked more at ease.

I felt the pressure of the room and her presence press in.

I spoke, more measured words, easier because they were more aggressive. A tightrope was easier to walk if you moved more quickly, forward. “I get the impression you think we’re making headway whenever I make a concession. Just to be clear, I’m being calculating or hiding barbs in my words.”

“And you think that’s being civil?”

I had to think for a second before responding, because this was so fucking hard. “Yes. You get the choice of me being honest and upset or me being polite and… biting, I guess. Biting and deceptive. It really is your choice.”

“Vicky—” she said, like she was almost exasperated.

“You said you understood my feelings. That means you understand these are the only options.”

She looked annoyed. I knew why, too.

In a very subtle way, she’d cornered herself. I meant that in every sense—not that she’d put herself in a corner against me. She’d cornered herself against herself. In saying she’d grasped my feelings and she understood them, in the fervor she’d had when she told me that, she’d found another thing to cling to.

She dodged, she evaded, she circled around. Not in real fights—she was crap in a real fight—but in a broader sense. When confronted with something bad, she grasped, she reached.

She’d faced my real emotions, supposedly, and she’d reached and she’d settled on the idea she’d figured me out. That she had a way forward.

She needed this little revelation. Her way of dealing with those tangible emotions had been to turn it around, to say ‘that’s the answer’.

“If those are the choices, then be civil, polite. Keep talking to me,” she said. “With enough communication, we can get past anything. We as in humanity, I mean.”

I could hear our mother in that ‘communication’ line.

Fuck me, I wished there was actual ventilation in this room. The thought crossed my mind that my ex-sister could create airborne pathogens, complex ones, and that thought didn’t leave once it found its mental real estate.

No window, closed door, nothing to look at—

My eye fell on Amy’s little minion.

“What about you, Dot?” I asked.