The fire crackled and danced.

“Decision,” Blake said. “Decision. That is an interesting word.”

Peggy giggled. I didn’t know why.

“It implies power,” Blake said. “Power that you didn’t have, Miriam.”

My mother looked down. I couldn’t see her face.

“I don’t know if it implies anything,” Peggy said. “It seems pretty simple. She could have told him she was pregnant. She decided not to.”

“Now that,” Blake said, pointing at Peggy, “is an accurate statement. But it is not what Miriam and Mila are trying to convey. Their little story, in the way they have framed it, is that Miriam somehow possessed the power to determine whether or not this boy would have the privilege of being Mila’s father. It’s classic Miriam, really. So typical. She’s such a treasure. Her daughter is so perfect. How fortunate that boy would have been to find out that some girl he fucked at a party was carrying his child. Surely, he would have been so eager to give up his whole future for a minimum-wage job and a life spent in service to the two of them.”

My mother still looked down. Her shoulders shook, and I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

Maybe it was both.

But me? I took Blake’s words and I blew them apart. I stripped away every mean thing until, sitting under the stars with the fire dancing across our faces, with Peggy looking blankly into the flames and Matty halfheartedly chuckling, with my mother maybe-laughing, maybe-crying, hidden from me in the dark, all I heard was one thing.

She thought I was perfect.

Smoke wafted through my cabin. I checked the door to the wood-burning stove. Found it tightly shut.

On my fourteenth birthday, my mother took her tips from the previous night’s shift and bought me a blue sweater at the mall. She wrapped it with a bow and gave it to me while Blake grilled cheap cuts of steak to go with the nightly vegetables.

I put it right on, found it so warm and soft that I wanted to leave early and fall asleep in it. But Blake told me to wait.

“I have a special something of my own for you,” he said. He handed me a small box, the kind he so often handed to my mother. I saw her eyes darken in confusion. I opened the lid and there was a pair of earrings. Gold. He only ever bought my mother silver.

I couldn’t look at her face.

“My ears aren’t pierced,” I told him.

“No time like the present,” Blake said. “A woman of fourteen should wear earrings. I bought some rubbing alcohol for the occasion. Wouldn’t want an infection like your mother keeps getting. All it takes is a little hygiene.”