“Read between the lines, Tai. It was one last-ditch effort by a guilty old man to make us feel like Mama didn’t kill herself and abandon us, since he did ditch us,” I blurt. My thumb bleeds as Tai stares at me with barefaced shock. Another memory reaches me with a searing flash: Mama quaking with fury in this very hall, jabbing a ringed pointer finger into Dad’s lab-coated chest, telling him, If it was up to you, I would remain trapped at Stökéwood forever, an empty-headed Marie Antoinette playing in her Petit Trianon. Only I will die here. Mama tried her hardest to convince us of her brightness, but it was there, the shadow side, strengthened by the disappointment of motherhood and the murmurs about Dad. “She didn’t want us more than her career, than the rest of her life. Neither of them did. It’s best we come to terms with that and move on.”

It takes her another moment to digest my words. My mouth tastes sour. I feel cut open, my fears exposed. But a part of me knows I’ve also said the words to hurt her, because I need her to be as hurt as I am; I need her to understand that no matter what Dad saw, Mama can’t be alive, she can’t, she can’t, but I regret that when Tai’s face wobbles and she hides it by rubbing her cheeks with her hands.

“Fuck. I can’t believe the way your brain works,” Tai says, dropping to the floor, her back against the wall. “That’s the first conclusion you jump to.” She’s trembling, even though her jaw is set.

“You’re wrong,” she says. “They both loved us more than anything.”

And it burns to watch, to listen as she convinces herself of a truth she felt so assured of as a child.

I cross my arms so they won’t betray me by shaking.

“Stop looking at me like that. Please stop.” Tai wraps her arms around her knees and squeezes tight. “If she’s on Viloxin, hiding…” She wipes her face. “We’ll find her and hear the truth from her,” she finishes, looking up at me with sweet, drooping eyes designed to skewer hearts. “I know we haven’t exactly been on the best terms. But we need to at least try to do this together. How is that not the most obvious thing in the world to you?”

“Try? Try how? What can we do that the actual police can’t? If she’s here, she’s hidden herself from them for the past decade. Our mother is dead, and we’re here for the retrospective. Well, I am,” I snap. My arms won’t stop vibrating, loose in their sockets, and my teeth are chattering, too. This house.