Dear Mom,

I’ve received your letters and want you to know that I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m not coming home for Christmas, so you can call off the letter writing campaign before anyone gets a cramp for nothing.

You want to know what I’m thinking about these days. It’s pretty boring in here. I’m not up on current events, and fashion stinks. If you’re looking for intellectual stimulation, then I’m a hole you don’t want to stumble into. Think of me as a mammoth cave. Your letters just flutter through the stale air, talk echoes; memories suffocate. A year ago people used to have dark circles where there should be faces, but now I see their noses plain as day. Doesn’t that convince you that I’m making progress and maybe it’s because I’m on my own?

You’ve always been there to bail me out, so I’ve made a sacred promise that I won’t come home until I have patched myself back together. I crossed my heart and hoped to die, stuck a needle in my eye, cut both my index fingers, and pressed the drops of blood together. You wouldn’t want me to go back on a promise, would you?

Try thinking of me as a distant relation.

Cecily

There were eight of them in all, including the one I wrote and my mother’s two. I found them when we were cleaning out my old bedroom, where they were stored in a box of papers marked “Cecily: 1990-2000” (more years than any other box, but then look at all that dead space). I knew what they were right away and slipped them into my bag while Mom’s back was turned. They’re mine, after all, even if I left them here last year when I moved into my tiny apartment and realized that “setting up housekeeping,” as Grandma calls it, didn’t mean I had to take every scrap of paper that had my name on it.

“Read me,” they say.

They are what my therapist Jeannine calls my litmus test. Storing them where 40 years from now they can come back to haunt me—that takes a lot of faith, she says, and that’s what I need. Read them every so often, she suggested. Some people prove themselves bouncing at the end of a rubber cord and some of us curled up in a favorite chair, trying not to watch the minute hand drag its late self to the next tock. Hitting rock bottom is about as good a term as any. You’re either alone or sharing the pits with a few other losers, and way far away on the brink, you can see your family and friends from before. If you’re lucky, when they turn their backs to walk away, they don’t wave. And for the rest of your life you’re picking bits of glass and shale out of your face and butt.

I can’t blame anyone—no one mistreated me. I wasn’t deserted. I was loved. I am loved. It was an accident. First, I was fourteen and partying on week-ends with some older kids. Shooting tequila, swallowing skittles. Then fifteen and smoking pot before school, skipping school, and driving to Nashville with other party kids where we’d shoplift till we poured into a booth and started cutting lines with my school ID. I sat across from my boyfriend’s cousin and watched his sinuses spill out of his left nostril, along with white-flaked blood. I was scared but when he didn’t die, I thought I’d dreamt it. I’ve been busted twice. When the Butler County meth lab blew and almost took me with it, I was seventeen and ready to surrender.

My mother had been writing since I left Ten Broeck Psychiatric Hospital and moved into the transitional home with three others. Her letters, at least before this bundle, were light, full of stories about the family, what she was doing, silly things at work. I read them quickly and then threw them out. Even though she’s the reason I’m alive, that shadow of disappointment was all it would take to crack my eggshell life—I could touch the inside of that oval and feel how thin it was.

All the king’s horses, all the king’s men . . .

Dear Cecily,

I won’t try to address all you said in your letter just yet, but I do want you to know that the “letter writing campaign,” as you call it, is out of my hands. All I did was mention that you might be persuaded to come home for Christmas now that you’re out of the program, and since we don’t know where you’re staying in Louisville (and no one would violate your wishes and try to find you), your sister suggested we all write letters “the old fashioned way.”

Notice I didn’t say which sister, so it may surprise you that it was Molly.

As if any of your family could ever consider you a distant relation, or a cave, for godssake. . . . But okay, I’ll try to go with that one for the sake of argument, but if you’re going to be a mammoth cave then are you sure that space you describe is empty? Mammoth Cave is not a lone crack in the world’s surface but a network of living spaces, inhabited by rare and beautiful treasures. If you are a cave, then you are a place so profound it strikes awe in my heart, so tenuous that caution springs to my lips—please, passerby, be careful. She is strong but not invincible. She can be polluted. She is lovely but not safe.

As far as bailing goes, you’re not the only one with promises to keep. I hope you will reconsider and come home to visit. We won’t over-shower you with kisses. You always loved the Christmas Eve service. For me, clever cave, the greatest gift would be to see you again.

Love, Mom

Uncle Ned. He was my favorite person when I was a kid, big and gentle as a panda, but prone to impatience. His wife, Lilly, left him when I was just getting started, for a childhood sweetheart, and Ned and Sonny followed her to Ohio. He tried to win her back but it didn’t work. A lonely man, I realized the other day, though it’s probably been obvious to everyone else for years. How do you find a new mate in a small town, when you live and hunt alone?

Sonny, the cousin who hung out with us girls most of his life, is now almost finished with his degree in engineering, which he loves because it allows him to make his meticulous drawings and imagine bridges spanning enormous spaces.

Cecily,

Aunt Meredith says we should all write to you at your secret PO, and Bossy Mossy gave us two rules. We’re not allowed to say mean things about you, and we’re sposd to talk about how we’re doing, and tell you something we remember about you. That sounds like 3 rules. I remember you used to always say, “2+2 doesn’t always equal 4.” By us doing this you will want to come home and find out what’s really going on. So okay, I’m down.

What jumps into my head right now is when me and Dad came back from Ohio after our year in hell. I couldn’t connect with my old friends, but you were so cool—you must have been about 15, since I know I was 13. Molly used to grab my hand and haul me around. “Come on, Sonny, let’s go pick some strawburries and make strawburry milkshakes.” You were working at DQ and always going out on weekends, but after school we’d go to your grandma’s barn, throw saddles on the horses, and go riding till dinner, and before it got cold, stop at the pond and lay around on the raft. We had the most grownup conversations, seemed like, and having such a popular girl spending time with me, well, I don’t care if it sounds pathetic because coming home was easier because of you.

Really, Cousin Cess, you’re my fav. I don’t care how bad off you’ve been, you’re still the prettiest and smartest and the most fun to smartaleck around with. And Iago misses you.

Yours in disaster, Sonny

Cecily,

I told Meredith that I didn’t think this business of writing letters would do anything but set your jaw, but she just gave me “the look.” Who knows, maybe your sisters can get through.

You couldn’t have done a better job if you’d lined them up like a row of sitting ducks.

Diana. Forge her signature. Drain her savings account. Pching.

Laugh at your grandmother’s art. Pching.

I don’t want to know the cannon you used on Molly.

And your mother’s still clutching her heart.

Sonny and I were lucky, just a little collateral damage.

She showed me the letter you wrote. I like the bit about the promise you made yourself, the only part that rang true in that whole self-centered letter. I can see you doing the blood brother thing with yourself. Blood sister, whatever. Always the one for rituals.

Like the time you insisted on a funeral service for Rusty. Even if he was the best hound ever, it was a little over the top. Still, I was touched. You handing me the handful of dirt to throw over the top of the grave you’d prepared. “Come on, Uncle Ned, sprinkle it, like this,” then showing me with your own handful, and later asking, “Why do they do that with the dirt?”

You can tear a person up and never blink.

Or maybe I’m just too dense to see what you were trying to say, with that business about the cave. Distant relation. There’s no such thing. I guess you’re just going to have to explain it to me in person. I’d like to see what your eyes are doing when you tell it.

Well, I don’t want to close like this, so I’ll tell you what I can see clearly, and it goes all the way back to when you were two months old and your mother set you in my arms so she could go be sick—some virus she had. Up to that point I had no interest in children, let alone babies. I was sure I’d drop you. “Get over yourself,” she said as she thrust you at me. You stared at me and squirmed a little like you weren’t too comfortable. Started to cry. I picked up a bottle with my free hand and leveled it at you. That did the trick and you grasped my pinky with one hand, squeezing it like you were keeping rhythm to the sucking. I lost track of time, lost in those deep blue eyes that seemed to see something in mine. Then you gave a big sigh and smiled, that nipple still plugged into the roof of your mouth.

What a rush of something. I have you to thank for Sonny, in a way, since it wasn’t till that moment that it ever occurred to me that I could be a father, let alone enjoy it. Your mother found me that way, almost blubbering. I can see now when it was that this boy became a man, and what a wee thing it was who did it. I’m saying that I guess you can do whatever you set your mind to, including make a liar out of me.

Be seeing you, Uncle Ned

My grandmother was a painter who taught high school art her whole life. Lately, her canvases have been tiny, the smallest about two inches square and the largest the size of a plate. She has one brush with sable hairs like a thread. The other day I stood in front of a series of three she’s got hanging in the hall, each one the face of a cube, each block more raised than the previous. “Steppingstones: splish . . . splash . . . space.” Splish is an almost flat cube of swirling white and green around a spot of gray that you can only see when you don’t look directly at it—water. Splash rises almost an inch, is darker, more swirl, and the gray spot has disappeared—deeper water. And space—almost two inches rising, and the colors have lifted as well, the paint globular, greens and purples, the swirling stopped, layering almost. “It’s simple,” she said when I asked her. “It’s stumble-fall-leap. I made them for you.”

Dear One,

Meredith shared your letter with me, and though I’d already bought this card and written on it, I now have something more to say. Since you were a child, I have watched you attack life, retire from it, swing back and hit it with all your might, crumble, get up, hit it again, fall, rise, fall, and rise again. You take things personally, when in fact sometimes s—t just happens.

I want to talk to you about yourself by talking about others, two others to be exact.

So first, your father. David was such an exciting young man, and Meredith and he just radiated when they were together. Oh, the hours they’d spend on the phone whenever Meredith came home during school breaks. Me having to hear just one side of it, or not even that, but the sound of one side of it, the quality of voice, breathless, bubbling, intimate. And it didn’t let up the way it does for so many people, not as I ever saw, right through the years of schooling, one degree after another. Books and babies. Meredith nursing you kids in one hand and holding a book in the other. David typing, his legs shaking nervously, which would put you sprawled across his lap to sleep. I never knew how.

The two of them, with their Ph.Ds. and their book publications, conferences, guest lecturing, students coming by the house . . . Well, that public image of his belied a very troubled man. After he was diagnosed, not till well into his thirties as bi-polar, he refused medication. Since his mood swings were unpredictable, and there might be long periods when he seemed normal, it was easy for him, and your mother, to believe that the latest manic period was the last. But experience taught us to recognize the slide—it was like slipping—starting with restlessness then a heightened state of creativity and intense intellectual work that he tried to make last as long as he could. This was when he got most of his best work done. But it never failed that after the paper or the chapter or the book was written, he would plummet. And that’s when you girls learned to give him a wider berth.

When he died, you three were 5, 8, and 12. Meredith worried about him, up till 4 a.m. writing his last book. His eyes were red-rimmed and there was a peculiar smell about him—like sweat but sharper, almost like an electrical fire behind the wall. Maybe I imagined that. Your mom tried to get him to rest, to accept massages, calming teas, anything short of going to the doctor, which he would not allow. When I dropped you girls off that day—you’d been out to the farm all day and were so deliriously happy and exhausted—you crawled willingly, after your baths, into bed, even though it was well before bedtime.

Your father was making himself a cocktail—probably his second or even third, his hand slipped somehow, and he cut his finger, slicing it down to the bone. Meredith and I ran into the kitchen to see him clutching his hand with a bloody towel. “I’ll run to the hospital and get it stitched,” he said, “Don’t come with me.” And that’s how he left. You see, your father wrapped that car around a tree because he refused help. Barely a quarter mile up the road! Not on purpose, but he was no longer in the driver’s seat, not the real David, who loved you girls more than anything in the world, loved his wife, a dynamic teacher, but some troubled version, his nerves shot, someone beside himself. And he would have welcomed some help, if he’d had a chance to rewrite that day, like one of his poems, with a different ending. You are your father’s daughter.

But you are also your mother’s.

And this is the second person I want to talk to you about, even at the risk of telling you what you already know. If that’s the case, just remember how old I am. But I want to tell you what I suspect no one has told you about last Christmas, when you were taken away.

It was Christmas Eve day that your mother returned alone from Rivendell, after seeing you delivered into the hands of the escort from Louisville, where you would spend the next six months at that hospital. I was with your sisters, and Sonny and Uncle Ned were here as well. We were all pretty shaken, but we went ahead with decorating the tree. I heard your mother’s car pull in the driveway, and when she didn’t come into the living room, after a time I went to the kitchen to find her.

She sat at the kitchen table, her chair pulled back from it, her arms dangling at her sides, her head hung over, and her hair falling forward. “Meredith,” I started. Her voice was barely audible. “Don’t, don’t,” she said, so I stopped and stood back, waiting for her to make the next move. Who knows how long I might have waited had not your sisters, Sonny, and Ned followed me. All you could hear were the sniffles of your sisters. Now, you may think this next part is grandstanding, but it’s where you and your mother are most alike. For both of you, it’s always been important that certain things, call them life’s transitions, be done right. She finally looked up and said, “Cecily will be gone now for six months, and we must hope for the best. You may do as you like, but I will not be speaking again until New Year’s Day. This is my prayer, for my daughter whom I love.” Her voice cracked on the word love. Molly flung her arms around her waist and buried her head in her lap. Diana followed and stood behind her, hugging her shoulders and resting her cheek on her head. And then Sonny went and took her right hand. Neddy followed and took her left. And it seemed that all her family had claimed some piece of her body (you at the very center), and it was left to me to somehow take everybody in my arms, which I tried to do.

It’s time for you to come home and claim your spot in this family’s tableau.

Your loving grandmother

Two letters are from my sisters, Molly and Diana. Both rock solid next to my hill of shale, sturdy eggs to my Humpty Dumpty. Diana in law school, Molly about to graduate from high school, bound for, of course, Western Kentucky University, where Mom teaches, where Dad taught, where Sonny and Diana went to school, everyone marching through. I look in one direction and see Diana, her spiked hair, her sense of right and wrong, and know she’ll be such a good civil rights lawyer. It probably doesn’t hurt that she loves to win. When I was in middle school and she was in high school, I stopped playing any kind of game with her. I was happy to let her win, and that just made her mad. On my other side is Molly. Put her on a horse and she’s in her domain—and so is the horse. All my life, Diana on my right, and Molly, once she was born, on my left, given to me when I turned three as my surprise birthday present. But, wait. I’m like one of these memory boxes, as Mom calls them, which trace only the high points—our awards, birthday cards, pictures in the newspaper or school newsletters, the steppingstones, in a way, that mark our successes, our happy moments.

Dear Cecily,

This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve already thrown the first 8 tries away, and so I’m just going to write without stopping and shove it in an envelope without looking, forgive the mistakes. And then I’m going to go watch Buffy.

You would not recognize me. I’m 15 years old now, which happened ten months ago, in case you forgot when my birthday is, ha ha. When you left before last Christmas, we were the bitterest of enemies. I really hated you for trying to ruin my family, including moi. You used to at least pretend to care until you got on the crackwagon and tried to trick me into dating your pimp when I was only 13. Mom wouldn’t be so keen on that little piece of Cecily history, do you think? But I’m not like you, I keep things that are HURTFUL to myself.

When you try to take people down with you, there are going to be hard feelings. Mom made me go to a therapist, and it turned out to be pretty good. I was in a group that met every week, and even though I’m not a recovering addict, this group is for teens with family members who are. Some of them it’s just a matter of time, I can tell, but other kids were really brave and went through a lot rougher things than I ever did, and they will never never do what their mother or father or aunt or uncle or in one case brother did to them.

So, one thing they kept drilling us about is that substance abuse is a disease and that everyone who makes it easier for the addict (“call it what it is”) has it too. What I want to say is, oh boy I can’t believe I’m going to put this on paper, I really do love you and want my big sister back. I keep remembering when you were still a human being who happened to care about me. You’ll also be surprised when I tell you that it was my big fat idea to write letters to you, so it’s up to me to get it all out, since it’s been a year since we’ve been within spitting distance and even longer since I wished you were dead.

So last week I started looking through the photo albums from when we were all younger and I pulled out two. The first is of you and me with Iago and Babe on my 10th  birthday. Our two horses are standing on either side of us and you have your arm around me and we’re both smiling and Iago’s looking bored and Babe is pulling at the bit. You have this big smile on your face and so do I, and that’s where I can see that we’re sisters, even though my teeth are crooked (and buck like Bugs). And things were really good for about a year, weren’t they? We’d go riding just about every weekend.

I like to make the sour memories disappear and then it’s just me and you riding through the woods, talking about grownup things, and then racing the last half mile home. Then we'd rub them down and it would be just the horse sounds and smells. Remember my poster? “Happiness is” at the top, and at the bottom, “a girl and her Arabian” with a picture in the middle of me cantering Babe towards the camera. That’s the second picture, even though you’re not in it, you’re behind it. Best Christmas present ever, thank you Cecily. When I look at that first picture I can feel the weight of your arm around my neck. And with the second, I can hear you say, “Molly, for chrissake, don’t run me down.”

If you come home, I won’t steal your cigarettes, like I use to, or whatever else I could find that not having it would cause you grief. And we can visit Babe and Iago (Sonny’s been riding him some, even though he’s kinda lame).

Your sister, Molly

Dear Sissy,

When we met in Louisville and I saw how you’ve changed, I drove all the way home thinking that I had to tell Mom, that it wasn’t fair to keep it a secret. I haven’t told her . . . and every day that passes it gets harder. I wish I’d broken my promise and told her that night.

I sure played the big sister card. How many times did I say “you should” in that two-hour meeting in Cherokee Park? And you whispering, “I know” and “I know, you’re right,” each time your voice lower and more discouraged. I guess the pep talk was more a letdown talk, wasn’t it. And I’ve been feeling bad, really bad that I couldn’t just listen. How did I become the preachy di-ann landers of this family!

I wouldn’t blame you if you went back to your housemates and laughed it up after I left. “Hey, Edna, do you know what my sister said?” “No, we cannot imagine.” “She said, ‘Maybe if you could get your hair styled and wear something that makes you feel real good about yourself, you wouldn’t slouch so.’” And then Edna, “Well at least she didn’t suggest you quit smoking.”

Hah! Ugh, I’m just shuddering.

I think that’s why I never told Mom. Even if I could have left out me telling you how to live something like my life, I would have looked like a liar, guilt on my face like egg. Will you ever be able to help me laugh this off? The way you used to wipe away my blues, my little sister, so much better at being the big sister than the big sister. At least before IT.

I can’t bear another silent Christmas, Cecily, without us in our pajamas (oversized tee and boxers for you). You making coffee and me making Bisquick coffee cake. Molly squeezing the oranges. Mom helping Grandma down the stairs. Sonny and Ned on their way. Molly insisting on Raffi’s Christmas CD, and you and me secretly enjoying it, rolling our eyes to “On Christmas morning, we can sing and celebrate, and make the feeling last all through the year.”

Last year was the first year we weren’t together. I mean there’ve been years when other people have been with us. Dad at the beginning. Aunt Lilly. Grandpa. But last year’s Christmas was the saddest ever. Mom just awash in sobless tears and all of us feeling helpless. Molly with her rage, saying to Mom, “Go ahead, wallow in it if you want, but I’m glad she’s gone!” Grandma turning away, “Oh, Molly, how could you.” Molly firing back, “Can it, old bitch,” then racing up the stairs, to cry in private. The gifts sitting there for a week before anyone would open them—except Molly, who defiantly opened hers, with loud commentary: “Oh, how lovely, you shouldn’t have.” “Just what I always wanted, a jewelry box, oh what a clever girl.” How I wanted to smack her! Warning look from Mom. (Later when Mom went for a walk we did come to blows and Uncle Ned had to pull us a part, just like he used to when we were all brats, a handful of hair in her fist, a pound of her flesh under my fingernails, and poor Sonny wringing his hands, and Uncle Ned saying, “I’ve a mind to switch you both.”) Finally, in the evening a sullen ride around town to look at the lights, ho ho ho.

You said you don’t remember last Christmas, but you’ll remember this one. You’re back among the living, Sissy, and there’s no denying it.

Ever your (older) sister, Diana

I stand up, fluff the pillow. Light another cigarette.

Dear Family,

You really know how to get to a girl. I’ve been crying for three days, reading your letters.

What can I say?

There’s nothing to say.

How can I face you, I don’t think I can.

You’re all so strong, I’ll be blown away. Pulverized.

I just can’t do it. I’m sorry. Truly I am.

I’m so ashamed and so afraid.

What if I lose everything I’ve gained over the past year?

I love you. Forgive me.

Cecily

Dearest Daughter,

I am coming to Louisville. Molly and Diana are coming with me, December 23. We’ll leave at 9:00, 10:00 your time, which will put us at the playground in Cherokee Park—Diana says you’ll know where we mean—between noon and 12:30.

I should like to talk with you about the word “pulverize”: to disintegrate, demolish. It sounds like something that happens quickly, but it is a process. It sounds like a machine that turns to grit whatever it’s fed. A greedy mouth. An unforgiving mouth.

It is part of another process I should like you to think about. It is a cave process. It is infinitely patient. Or maybe outside of patience. A relentless creativity, let’s say. The cave reaches out of itself in countless directions, creating—or finding—waterways and air passages, some so tiny that you don’t realize that you have felt its breath, a thing so slight you must doubt its existence. Sometimes the cave traps poisonous fumes. Sometimes the cave saves living creatures when the cold outside would kill them. Some living things—blind shrimp, for instance—are found nowhere else on earth. Moisture rich with minerals gathers at the ceilings and on the floors, building up, building down. Stalactites, you used to say, “because they hold on tight.” And stalagmites, “because they might make it to the top!”

We are all of us caves, my girl. We grow up, we grow down. Some caves are deeper than others, but all of us have depths we have yet to plumb. You are part of a karst system bigger than yourself. Pack a bag of whatever you want to bring with you.

It’s your choice, Cecily. . . . XX

It was a mild but windy day when I had Edna drop me off at 11:45. I wanted to be there before they arrived so I could watch them, make up my mind.

“You sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“I’m sure. If you don’t see me, I’ll call you next week, okay?”

Edna’s from eastern Kentucky, almost done getting her teeth replaced after a life of disregard. She’s a great imitator of her favorite shows—the local news, Martha Stewart, and Ally McBeal, who she thought was cute. She did a good imitation of me, too, when she didn’t like what I was saying.

“People just don’t understand me,” she’d whine, in my voice, balling her fist at the corner of her eye. Then in her own, harsh and spitting, “So why don’t you go do them a favor?” I gave her the finger a lot in the beginning, but one day she did her Martha Stewart imitation, holding up a capsule she was supposed to take. Examining it closely, she said, “When I’m in a hurry, I have a special way of sticking this up my ass.” When I laughed, she shouted, “She lives!” shaking her fists at heaven, then bowing down and pounding the carpet, “Thank you, Lord,” and crossing herself like a Catholic. I had to laugh again. “Two in one day,” she said, “you’re going to have a heart attack, that is if I don’t first.”

Now I kissed her on the cheek.

“Take care, girl.”

I set my suitcase behind the stone fountain and looked for a place to hide. I remembered the trees as being closer. I’d thought to hide behind one so I could see them park and watch them as they walked around, trying out the swing, maybe, looking up at each passing car.

Instead, it was me looking up when they drove into the parking lot and Mom pulled up to the fountain, where I was standing. How long did we stay frozen like that? Mom and Diana staring from the front seat and Molly peeking through the space between them.

Then things happened so fast, I can hardly separate them in my memory. Mom put the car into park. The engine died. All three doors opened, and I could feel myself turning, ready to run, but they were too fast. I was in their arms, and then my knees were buckling, “oh god, oh god,” someone was saying—could it be my voice? Then Molly, “I love your hair like that.” Mom just smiled and pressed her forehead against mine, then pulled me toward the car. And Diana, when I turned back, saying, “I’ll get your bag.”

That emotional maelstrom is still a beating at the back of my throat. I pull out a pad of paper and a pen from the drawer in the coffee table.

Dear Myself,

Everyone knows a piece of you, and yet no one knows the one piece.

Why don’t you tell it? Take it out of the dark. Unpack it from the backseat of the car.

It’s not true what Grandma said, that we all went to bed early that night.

You were busy sliding behind the driver’s seat as he ran back to the house for his keys, his hand wrapped in a towel. Why did Mom give up so easily when he said he wanted to go alone? She should have seen that he was crying. All the way down the driveway that horrible sobbing and cursing. “I hate my life.”

What had we done to make him so sad? You still had your pillow in your arms, because you were going to sleep alone in the tent that we had set up that day and surprise everyone in the morning. You buried you face in it and curled up as tight as you could behind him.

But you must have made a noise, because suddenly his hand was on your back. “Is that you, Cecily? What the—” and then the car stopped so loud and hard it hurt to move. The dome light had gone on, and when you looked over the edge of the back seat, what got your attention was the windshield, which looked blistered, like a window covered in frost. A line started just above his head and reached toward the passenger side, traveling slowly like a long skinny finger. When it reached the door and started creeping into the passenger window, you slammed your shoulder against the door and jumped out.

Daddy’s door was stuck and something under the hood was ticking. You went to the passenger door. From outside, the creeping line looked sad. Keeping your eye on it, you opened the door and crawled in, still clutching your pillow. You tried to get him to wake up, but his eyes were closed and there was no room to get your hand in between his neck and the steering wheel. So you waited. His poor hurt hand was lying in the seat between you. You picked it up and rewrapped the bloodied towel around it.

There was a big bump when the car moved and started sliding, and it made him groan. His forehead was the only part you could reach, so you patted it, but your fingers came away bloody. You stole a glance at the creeping crack.

He sighed.

You pushed the pillow partway into his lap, rubbing your fingers on it, and bolted.

You had to tell! But what if you did this. You stopped in the middle of the road and looked back at the car where the line now reached the ground, a long split in the earth racing toward you. Mom’s car was coming down the driveway, so you hid in the culvert and waited till you heard her car door slam. She was going after him. She felt bad letting him go alone.

Then she screamed, and you took off again for home, only you had to hide behind the big pine when Grandma came running down the drive.

Mom never asked why your pillow was in Daddy’s lap.

But when would she have noticed?

It’s not just the splinter finger pointing at you or the folding windshield. Tell her! Show her this letter. Not because it’s the magic key that explains why you’ve been such a disappointment, but because it doesn’t belong to you, not anymore.

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