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The first stab of annoyance comes fast and hard, painful because it’s a mar on the perfection of our relationship. I never wanted to feel this way. Not about Alex.

“Try to explain,” I say, my hand finding hers.

“My life isn’t like yours,” she begins.

“I know,” I say too quickly. She closes her eyes and I know she just felt that stab, too. “Sorry,” I say. “Go on.”

“It’s not like yours,” she says again. “You’re supposed to move out among people, widen your horizons.”

“And you’re not?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head emphatically. “It’s better if I don’t.”

“It’s not better,” I argue. “What are you going to do? Get a job at the gas station? Waste your life flipping burgers?”

“Not better for me,” she says quietly. “It’s better for others.”

I’m about to tell her that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard when I remember the sound of skin tearing, and Ray Parsons’s blood on the church stones.

Her hand pulls away from mine, pointing at the empty pizza box.

“You’ve got mice.”

They scatter as I jump to my feet, receding into the shadows. I grab the box and take it upstairs to the trash, Alex following me and pulling her coat on. We kiss at the door, the conversation unfinished but over.

I lie in bed pondering the wound that the first stab of our relationship left behind, wondering if it’s one that can heal or if it will be fatal. I think about the conversation that might have happened if I’d had the balls to ask if she remembered the night they found Anna, and if it would’ve gone better.

I text Alex and tell her good night, she responds with the same, and I hold my phone tightly, too aware that the present is all we have if I can’t mention the past and she won’t talk about the future.

38. ALEX

I don’t like to come home.

Other houses have warmth in them, the lines between the people who live there humming with unspent energy ready to unreel. Conversations from the past still hover in the air, waiting for the threads to be picked up again. The air here is cold, empty to the point of sterility. When I hear my name it’s shocking, a word that isn’t spoken. Taboo.

It came from the living room, so I follow it, the only light provided from the moon bouncing back off the snow outside. My mother is sitting on the couch, a cut-crystal decanter on the coffee table in front of her, glass in her hand.

“Mom?” I say, which doesn’t sound right and never has. The word carries a history that we don’t share, implies picnics and swing sets and trips to the pool.

“Who else?” she asks, and I don’t know what to say to that. “Come here,” she says. “Have some scotch.”

I don’t want scotch and I don’t want to drink with her, but it’s the only olive branch she has to offer, so I take it, the alcohol heavy and hot as it rips down my throat. She throws hers back like water and pours another for both of us.

“You’ve been out a lot,” she says.

I have, and I don’t like the guilt that seeps over me with her words. Like maybe I shouldn’t be.

“I have a boyfriend,” I tell her. That word feels so meaningless here, lacking the fullness it carries at Jack’s house, the weight of his mom’s hand on my shoulder as we stand side by side in the kitchen, pouring off-brand root beer into plastic cups. I take another drink of scotch, hoping it will make words come more easily. “His name is Jack.”

Mom investigates the bottom of her glass like she can’t figure out how it became empty so quick. “The boy who brought your car back?”

“Yes.”

“He’s good-looking.”

I know he is, so I don’t reply.

She pours herself another and frowns a little when it overflows onto her fingers, flicking sticky amber drops off into the dark. “Do I need to talk to you about . . .”