Mom touched my shoulder and I took her hand off.
Not a flinch. A removal. Her fingers had landed warm, bridal, the first-morning squeeze of a woman who wanted her daughter at the table. I lifted them, set them back on her own wrist, and stood. The clean dress clung where the cotton underneath had already failed. I did not wipe my thigh. I did not sit back down.
“Headache,” I said. “I’m going up.”
“Sweetheart, you haven’t eaten—”
“I’m not hungry.”
Graham watched over his mug. Caleb watched the place where her hand had been. Neither of them helped me. That was the point. I climbed the stairs with Mom’s voice still in the kitchen and my cunt full of a night I had not washed off, each step a wet shift I had to keep off my face.
His door was open. I went through it. Caleb followed and shu
