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“Don’t you Leanne me!”

Two of Connor’s cousins are arguing behind the couch. One of them says he forged her name and the other says we don’t know that and the first one says look at the paper in her hand and they keep going back and forth like that for a while. Aunt Sherry has started to cry into a napkin, but she’s wasted and always crying for one reason or another, so I don’t take it personally. Uncle Bub cracks the den door, peers out with a curious kid on each side of him, turns pale, and shuts it again.

I stand in the midst of the mayhem and don’t utter a peep.

This is the part of the night I did not and could not plan for.

To my surprise, it’s turning out to be far easier than I ever could’ve expected.

For thirty-one years, I have explained myself in this house. Why I was late and why I was early. Why I couldn’t work a double and then do the flowers. Why this and why that, why here and why there. Why, why, why?

Now, three of the closest people in the world to me are once again demanding answers.

I’m finding that my mouth won’t open.

I think I’m done explaining.

I set the clicker on the side table.

“Delilah,” my mother cries out over Aunt Virginia’s shoulder. “Delilah, you look at me when I’m talking to you!”

I pick up my laptop. The cable pulls loose and the screen dies.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Vivian screams at me.

She lunges in front of me. Up close, she’s shaking so hard her earrings are shivering.

“You ruined my life!”

I simply swerve around her like she doesn’t exist.

Holy fucking shit, that’s the greatest high I’ve ever felt.

For forty-eight hours now, I’ve been brimming over with this cold, hard-edged rage. I thought I wanted to ruin her for everything she’s spent her whole life doing to me.

But now that I’ve done it, it turns out this was the best revenge.

Ceasing to acknowledge her at all.

That’s the one thing she’s always gotten: the spotlight. But if I don’t give it to her… who will?

Her eyes bug out of their sockets. Screaming incoherently, she clamps down on my wrist to stop me from floating away.

I don’t pull back. I just look down at her hand on me, and then up at her. I keep looking until she takes it back.

“Say something,” she hisses. “Say something to me, you bitch.”

I don’t.

I don’t say anything to Connor, either. He calls my name—we can fix this, Dee, we can talk about this at home, you didn’t have to do it like this—as I pass by where he’s arguing with his dad, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Then Ed grabs him by the shirt and pins him against the wall again.

Just like Vivian, he doesn’t exist to me anymore.

None of them do, really. They’re just disembodied voices drifting through me like smoke. My name again, and are you okay, my mother’s wails, my sister’s sobs.

I open the door. Cold rushes in.

“If you walk out of this house,” my mother shrieks, “you will never be allowed to come back in it!”