Maria was right about the house.

For all the long nights Maria said she’d worked on it, the rose wall wasn’t even half done. It looked like Mom had painted over it and started again and the restart was sloppy. The herbs Mom had brought home all those weeks ago from the farmers’ market were crispy on the windowsill. The house was full of decaying flowers. Vase after vase.

While I waited for the kettle to heat up, I wandered around collecting them. I dumped the water and tossed the wilted bouquets. Threw away the brittle herbs. Then I finished making her tea and brought it upstairs.

By the time I’d gotten back to the bathroom, Mom was calm, but she still looked awful. Her eyes were hollow. She was puffy, the way she got when she was drinking too much. But worst of all, the smell of her perfume was gone. There was nothing but the scent of rotting blossoms and stagnant water still in my nostrils and the smell of the candles she used to hide it all.

I set her mug on the tray over the tub and I leaned on the sink. “Mom?”

She stared glassy-eyed into the bathroom.

“Mom, have you still been seeing your therapist?”

She didn’t answer.

“When’s the last time you had a session?” I asked.

“Yesterday,” she said finally. “Venus is in retrograde. I’m supposed to practice self-care. Opal should help.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “But what did your therapist say?”

“That is what my therapist said.”

I stilled. “Why would your therapist talk to you about retrograde?” I asked carefully.

“What else would she talk to me about?”

My stomach bottomed out. No… “Mom, you said you had a therapist. A real one. You said—”

“She’s a spiritual advisor, and she’s helped me more than any doctor I’ve ever seen.”

I stared at her. I didn’t even know what to say.

Nothing was different.

It was all the same circle again and again. Maddy was right. Maddy was always right.

I felt sick. My breathing started to get shallow.

I had to leave before I had a panic attack. I got up and walked out of the bathroom without another word.

I felt like the house was spinning. I could barely make it down the stairs.

I knew what would happen now. The same things that always did: Mom, leaving in a blaze of glory. The police escorting her out if she wouldn’t go, her making a scene, or them coming later to take a report of all the things missing when she slips out in the night.

Or maybe she’d just stop getting out of bed altogether and then Neil would call me to ask what he should do. I’d get her up and take her to the hospital with opals in her pockets and then three days later she’d check herself out against doctor’s orders and vanish again.

I was devastated.

The inevitable hadn’t happened yet, but it would. It had already started.

I felt defeated and stupid, and horrible for Neil, whose clothes were on the lawn and cuff links and watches were missing because I hadn’t told him what Maddy said I should have told him from the very beginning.

And I couldn’t even cry about it. I didn’t have time. Because I would not let Neil come home to this mess, when it was all my fault for hoping and believing her when she said she was better. It was my fault she was even here.

I felt myself start to get small, the edges pulling in. The humiliation and disappointment making me want to isolate and disappear. I already knew I wouldn’t go to Justin’s tonight. I wouldn’t want to see anyone, wouldn’t want to socialize or be around the kids. It would be hard enough to see Maddy.

I grabbed a laundry basket and made my way outside, trying not to cry.

When I got to the lawn, Maddy was there. She was bagging up the clothes into trash bags.

“Hey,” she said, grimacing at a pair of Neil’s underwear that she’d picked up by the corner. “I didn’t take him for a Hanes guy.”

I was so relieved to see her, I almost broke down right then and there.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“I know. I’m gonna anyway.” She shoved the underwear into the bag.

My chin quivered.

She didn’t want to help Amber. She didn’t care what became of my mother. But Maddy knew I’d be the one cleaning up the mess because Neil would be the one injured if I didn’t, and that would weigh on me more than any of it. So she came.

Maddy watched me look over the heaps of clothing, despair swallowing me.

“I wish I could not care,” I whispered.

Maddy saw my face and dropped the bag and closed the distance between us and hugged me.

My best friend was a docking station. Same as Justin. And I cried right into her hair.

When I got it together enough to pull away from her, she put her hands on my shoulders. “I want you to know that your empathy is beautiful, Emma. I hope you never lose that. I do hope that one day you get some boundaries though.”

I laughed a little but she didn’t smile.

“You cannot keep caring about her more than you care about yourself.”

When I didn’t answer, she took a deep breath and let me go.

“Come on,” she said, picking up the bag. “Let’s get Neil’s shit off the grass.”

CHAPTER 39 JUSTIN

I got the text from Maddy right as I was getting out of my meeting. She told me briefly what happened, and I came immediately. I didn’t even know Emma had left.

Maddy was alone in the yard putting button-down shirts into a laundry basket when I walked around the side of Neil’s house.

I don’t know how much was out there on the lawn to begin with, but it must have been a lot because it looked like a whole walk-in closet was still on the grass.