My mother’s hand flew to her mouth.
For several seconds, she didn’t move.
Neither did anyone else.
The music had been cut, the chanting was gone, and all that remained was the faint churn of the pool filter and the sound of my mother trying not to sob behind the glass doors.
Chloe was still on her knees.
“What does she mean?” she asked.
She wasn’t looking at me anymore.
She was looking at our mother.
“Mom?”
My father opened the door first.
He walked onto the patio slowly, as though each step required a decision he had avoided making for twelve years.
My mother followed him.
Her eyes went immediately to my bare shoulders.
I had seen that expression on her face before.
Hospitals.
Bandage changes.
Physical therapy appointments.
Summer mornings when I was seven and cried because even a cotton shirt hurt against healing skin.
She stopped several feet from us.
Chloe looked between our parents.
“Why is everyone acting like I should know what she’s talking about?”
My father rubbed both hands over his face.
“Because you should,” he said quietly.
Chloe’s expression changed.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“Know what?”
I handed the microphone back to Chloe, but she let it fall onto a lounge chair beside her.
Nobody needed amplification anymore.
The entire backyard was silent enough to hear every word.
I sat on the edge of the nearest chair because my legs had begun to tremble.
Not from shame.
From memory.
“We were six,” I said.
Chloe stared at me.
“I know.
Mom said there was an accident.”
“There was.”
“A fire.”
I nodded.
That was the version she knew.
A fire had broken out in the small lake house our parents had rented for a family weekend.
Chloe and I had been asleep in the upstairs bedroom.
An electrical fault had started inside the wall near the hallway.
By the time the smoke alarm woke anyone, flames had already blocked part of the staircase.
That much had never been hidden from her.
The rest had.
My father took over.
“I got upstairs first,” he said.
“Your mother was calling emergency services.
The hallway was filling with smoke.
I got Maya out of the bedroom.”
Chloe frowned.
“And me.”
My father’s eyes closed.
“No.”
