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“I’m not upset. I’m disappointed.”

The disappointment card is a favourite of hers to play. You’d think its effectiveness would wear off with time, but I still feel a sting somewhere deep in my gut, like there’s a thread knotted around my insides she can manage to tug on even from a few hundred miles away.

“Did that boy kick you out?”

I chew on my lip to hold back all the swear words just begging to be let out and squeeze the edge of the pillow instead.

“His name is Nick,” I say, “and he did not kick me out. I dumped him.”

“I see. So now you don’t have an apartment. What’s the plan here, Andrea?”

I wait for her to ask what happened, or even just ask if I’m okay, but she stays quiet while she waits for my answer.

“I’m figuring it out. I just needed…a break.”

She lets out a sharp sigh. “That’s what you said when you moved in with him. What exactly are you taking a break from, Andrea? Responsibility? Being an adult? Just because you decided you needed this whole gap year thing does not mean you get to opt out of being a grown-up, and grown-ups do not break into their father’s house.”

I let out a sigh of my own and throw my free hand up in the air, waving it around for emphasis like she can actually see me. “I can guarantee Dad doesn’t care that I’m here. He doesn’t really care what I do at all, and we both know it.”

I wait for her to protest. I wait for her to tell me that couldn’t possibly be true, but even if she did try to convince me he actually cared enough to get involved in my life, we’d both know she was lying. I’ve seen him joking around with Sandy’s sons at holiday dinners enough to know he’s found something with his new family that he never had with us.

He let his marriage with my mom slip right through his fingers, and she’s spent her whole life since then building a company she’ll never have to lose the way she lost him—something I’ll never have to lose either. That’s why she’s had my internship waiting for me for years.

“Well, I do care,” she says. “That’s why you need to come back to Toronto tomorrow. I’ll book you a train ticket. You can spend the rest of the summer getting ready for your internship. We can even look into you starting early, although I suppose it’s not really early when you’ve delayed it for a whole year of doing nothing with that boy.”

Tender moment over.

I roll my eyes and press my lips together to hold back a groan.

“I wasn’t doing nothing,” I tell her, “and I have money saved up. I’ll book my own ticket in a few days. I just need to process things ending with Nick.”

“Andrea…” I can imagine her pressing her fingertips to her temple as she trails off for a moment. “You can’t keep doing this. I can excuse a gap year. I can excuse all the ridiculous things you got up to in high school, but you’re nineteen now. By the time I was nineteen, I already knew exactly where I wanted to be in the next ten years, and every day, I worked hard to make that happen. That’s what I raised you to do too, but the past few years, you’ve been…not yourself, and I just don’t get it.”

A knot forms in my stomach as I listen to her.

I don’t get it either. For years and years when I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. I loved the way she looked at me whenever I said that, like I was the brightest, shiniest thing she’d ever seen. I don’t know when the weight of all that shine started to become too much, like a suit of golden armor I was supposed to carry through life, when really all it did was sit so heavy on my shoulders I couldn’t breathe.

“Mom, I just—”

“I have a meeting,” she says at the same time I start to speak. “I have to go. Send me your train details as soon as you book the ticket.”

I swallow down whatever I was about to say. Even if she did give me the chance to speak, I’m not sure I could put it into words.

“Yes, sergeant,” I drone instead.

She ignores my sarcasm. “Andrea, one last thing. I’m…I’m glad you’re somewhere safe.”

A different string, tighter than the last, loops around my insides and pulls so hard I actually press a hand to my stomach.

Then she hangs up.

CHAPTER 5

Naomi

“Naomi, you—”

Whatever Priya was about to say gets cut off by Shal’s yelp from behind her as the two of them come barreling into the entryway, a few grocery bags clutched in their hands.