Page 74 of Kitten

I interrupted. “Don’t fight. It’s my first night. You can fight tomorrow.”

“First night!” Lou clapped. “You’re right, we should celebrate.” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me to the kitchen, where she began to pour vodka into a cup.

“Okay, don’t kill me. I’ve only just moved in.”

“Grow up. Also, you did not just move in. You’ve been sleeping in my room for a month.”

“Then why are we celebrating?”

“I’ll take any excuse.”

I put my arms on her knobby shoulders. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re a very nice person.”

“You’re so awkward.” She squirmed away. “We need a chaser.”

In the absence of a suitable beverage, Lou diluted the vodka with a mysterious cherry liqueur, which seemed undeniably worse than drinking it straight. Nicolo refused the drink at first but eventually gave in with a groan. We toasted. A few drops splashed from my cup onto the rug. Lou pointed at the pink blob, then at me, then snapped her fingers. “Your responsibilities begin.”

“Lou, you are the fascist,” said Nicolo.

By some miracle, they were smiling at each other. I bent to blot the stain with my shirt. My sleeve became wet, but I didn’t mind. I felt calm, even happy.

Lou and Nicolo fought over the Bluetooth, which automatically connected to Nicolo’s phone. “I knew it,” she said. “You’ve been using my speaker.”

“You’ve been drinking my vodka,” he responded. I sat on my air mattress, flat and folded like a square of origami, and sipped my drink while they bickered.

This was my home. It was a new home. It was a home I had chosen. I thought about my mother, who had lived for years now in that red house she did not choose. All this time I’d felt sorry for leaving her alone in that place when I was the only one who could help her. But I was beginning to understand that my guilt was futile. No matter how hard you tried, you could not care someone into becoming. You could not protect them from their life.

For a moment I was hit with grief, the same grief I’dexperienced when I put away the paints for the final time in Holme. But the feeling didn’t last long. I closed my eyes, saw colors. When I opened them, I felt relief, and I felt love, too, the way love felt when I was a child, like something ancient, something that would never change. Better—a love with sympathy for my mother, free from our guilt and our resentment, clean.

I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, then finished it in one breath. I poured myself another glass and finished it again.

I called my mother.

She answered on the second ring. “Katie?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“You called me.”

“I know.”

“You never call me.”

“I was thinking of you.”

She did not respond.

“I wanted to tell you”—I poured another glass of water, convinced it gave me courage—“that I’m sorry. For not calling on your birthday. I’m sorry about everything. The money, the way I left last year, not telling you about James. I’m sorry that we’re not close anymore.”

“Where is this coming from?”

I told her about the job interviews. About Holme and the Hartleys and Isabelle. Finally, I told her about Silver. How much I loved her, how playful and sacred she was, how I’d made a mistake and now she was gone.

“What I’m trying to say is, all this stuff made me think about you. I’m always thinking about you. How you wouldfeel about something, what you would say. If you’d laugh at me or be disappointed in me. If you would forgive me. I’m scared you think I’ve just left and forgotten about you, but I haven’t. I think about you all the time.”

Water dripped from the tap. I twisted it open, focusing on the sound of the rush. I considered hanging up.

“You feel sorry for me,” my mother said.