“No.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Then you didn’t write letters to us.”
“You wrote letters to yourself.”
She flinched.
Good again.
Again I hated myself.
But anger had nowhere else to go.
We eventually reached her apartment.
That somehow made everything worse.
Plants.
Books.
A yellow mug in the sink.
Shoes by the door.
Photographs on the wall.
Lily laughing with strangers.
Lily gardening.
Lily at dinner.
Lily on a hiking trail.
Ten years of proof that her life had not stopped when ours did.
I walked slowly around the living room.
“You garden?”
“A little.”
“You killed a cactus when we were seventeen.”
“I changed.”
I looked at the photographs.
There was not one of me.
Not one of our parents.
“How long have you had this life?”
“Different versions of it.”
“Rehabilitation first.”
“Supported housing.”
“Then work.”
“Then this apartment.”
I turned.
“Start from the beginning.”
She sat.
The story came in fragments.
After the crash, a passing driver found Lily far from Blackwood Highway.
She had suffered a serious head injury.
For months, she could not provide a reliable surname.
Her first name surfaced early.
