In two words, spoken over my burned body, Sylvia revealed the truth that had been underneath the whole time: that to her, and to her son, I had never been a person at all.

I had been a means.

A woman attached to a house they wanted.

And the moment the woman and the house came apart — the moment I was on the floor and the deed was on the counter — they went, without hesitation, for the deed, because the deed was the point and I had only ever been the packaging.

It is a specific horror, to discover that people you lived beside, cooked for, slept next to, built a life with, never once saw you as a person.

It rearranges your whole past.