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She shrugs. “Because I’m sure he has pieces of you that I wish I could have.”

Dropping my head, I crumble. Tears spill down my cheeks as she cries, and I feel guilty because she’s right. I do give him more because I trust him more.

“I’m sorry,” I weep. “I don’t mean to hurt you, I just ... I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to connect with you.” Lifting my eyes to hers, I admit, “I don’t want to fight with you, but I’m angry, and I don’t even know why. It’s just there, this constant annoyance.”

She squeezes my hand, silently telling me that she loves me. I know she only wants the best for me and that she’s trying, but still, it’s all wrong, because I’m all wrong.

“It’s all my fault,” I confess, my words breaking beneath the heavy burden I carry.

“No, sweetie, it isn’t your fault.”

“It is.” My shoulders hang, and when I look at her tear-stained face, I tell her, “I don’t know how to be your daughter. I feel like all I am is a disappointment.”

She pulls me into her arms and lays her cheek on top of my head. “You are far from a disappointment,” she assures. “You’re perfect. We’re just on two separate pages, and we have to find a way to come together.”

“I just want to be happy and normal like all the other girls, but I’m broken—too broken for you to love.”

“I love you more than anything, and you are not broken,” she states, pulling back and looking me straight in the eyes. “You’ve been doing so much better.”

She’s wrong, she just doesn’t know it.

I’m far from better. It’s my mask of abstraction that fools her into believing that I’m doing well. If she got close enough, she’d see the fractures, see the lies, see the truth. But only I can see them because I wear them all on the inside. Everyone else is simply blind.

Her hand runs down the side of my face before falling. When she gently pushes my sleeve up to expose the tattoo, her lips lift into an affectionate smile.

“Was this your idea?” she questions tenderly and without any judgment.

I shake my head. “It was Sebastian’s.” I smile weakly. “He told me I couldn’t look.”

“You didn’t know what the tattoo was?”

“Not until it was already done.”

She rotates my wrist face up and looks at the delicately thin bow that’s tied over my scar. Tears swim in her eyes, and when she lifts them to mine, she’s sincere when she says, “It’s really beautiful.”

We hug, and I wish I were different, something other than the girl I am—a disaster among people who never deserved my chaos. Perhaps I’m the cause of her straying from my dad. As much as I want to blame her, what if it was my fault? The fact that I couldn’t make her happy, that I was this constant strain on her that made her feel as if she had to run to find relief from somewhere else.

What if I’m the root of it all?

I look around and see little fires everywhere, burning away at peoples’ joy.

Am I the match or the gasoline?

“I have an idea,” she says. “Let’s spend this evening together, just you and me. We’ll order in Chinese and watch a movie. I’ll even let you pick. What do you think?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?” She brushes away the last drop of sadness from my cheek, and I nod. “Okay then. Well, I should get going.” With a kiss to my cheek, she stands. “We’re going to be okay.”

Are we?

“I love you, Mom.”

She smiles, and this time, it reaches her eyes. “I love you too.”

The door closes behind her, and the world drops out from beneath me.

I sit with myself for a while, unmoving, bones cold, lost—that’s what I am.