I used to think she was crying because you wouldn’t come.

Now I think she was crying because she finally couldn’t remember why you left, and some part of her knew it was her fault.”

Chapter 10 — The Box on the Closet Shelf

We found it the next day, on the high shelf of the front bedroom closet, behind the winter blankets — a department-store gift box, soft-cornered with age, with our mother’s handwriting on the lid: the children. Not our names.

Just the children, as though we were still small and interchangeable and hers.