Chapter 4: House on fire
1592 Words
The apartment is her first. She called to tell me like it was news worth celebrating. It was—on paper.
But all I could hear was the sound of one more box being checked on the list of things I’d lost.
She said she’d take the dogs. Said they needed stability. Said they missed routine.
I said, “Of course.” What I meant was: please, take them before they see me like this—hollow and borrowed and pretending it’s all part of the plan.
She took my son, too.
Said she could get him to school. Said he wanted to go.
I didn’t argue. He’d stopped hugging me months ago. Looked at me like I was a question no one could answer.
And then, the night before she left, she said it.
She was standing in the doorway, holding a Target bag full of cheap cleaning supplies like it was armor. Hair up. Eyes glassy, but sharp. Older than twenty. Older than me, somehow.
And she said:
“When Chris died, I didn’t just lose him. I lost you too.”
No pause. No trembling voice. Just a clean slice across the ribcage.
“I had to watch you rot,” she went on. “Like you were being eaten from the inside out and didn’t even care. I kept hoping you’d come back. That you’d wake up one morning and be you again. But I realized you weren’t asleep. You were gone.”
I said nothing. Because what do you say when your own daughter eulogizes you while you’re still standing?
She sniffed. Laughed a little. That sharp, bitter laugh women develop when they grow up too fast and start calling their therapists by first name.
“It was like watching a house catch fire in slow motion,” she said. “And the worst part? I wasn’t even mad. I was just waiting for someone to put you out. I thought maybe I could. But you didn’t want to be saved. You wanted to burn.”
Then she walked out. No hug. No dramatic slam. Just silence, and the smell of her perfume lingering like an aftershock.
I stared at the wall for a long time after that. Tried to tell myself it didn’t hurt. That I was used to being the villain in someone else’s origin story.
But her voice played on a loop in my head for days. Not the words—just the tone. That quiet fury. That unbearable knowing.
She didn’t say it to punish me. She said it because it was true.
Because she saw it.
Because someone had to.
She took everything that mattered when she left—dogs, groceries, responsibilities I barely deserved—and she didn’t even slam the door.
That’s the part that keeps looping.
Not the speech. Not the accusations. Not the hollow silence afterward.
Just the fact that she walked out like it was inevitable.
Like she’d rehearsed it in her head so many times that by the time she did it, it was just muscle memory.
And now?
Now I sit in a stranger’s apartment, on a borrowed couch that smells like Febreze and broken promises, wondering how the hell I became someone who needs rescuing.
There’s a mug on the table. Faded print that says “World’s Okayest Mom.”
I don’t know if it’s supposed to be funny.
I think the worst part is that I used to believe I was doing okay. That survival equaled effort. That keeping everyone fed and alive counted for something. That they’d forgive the rest.
They don’t. And they shouldn’t.
My youngest asks when her sister’s coming back. I lie. I say, “Soon.” But we both know “soon” is just the word we use when we mean never, but I don’t want to hurt you yet.
That night I light a cigarette I don’t even like and sit by the window, watching a stray cat eat something it shouldn’t. The moon is indifferent. The stars are smug. And me?
I’m angry.
Not at them.
At me. For letting the fire start. For letting it grow. For standing in the middle of it and calling it warmth.
It was a Thursday.
Not the kind of day you remember because of a birthday or a fight. Just one of those middle-of-the-week, nothing-special, everything-quiet kind of Thursdays that ends up fossilized in your memory for no reason other than you didn’t know it was the last good one.
Chris was in the kitchen, barefoot, humming something under his breath that sounded like an old gospel song wrapped in stoner blues. He always hummed when he cooked. Said it “seasoned the air.”
The kids were sprawled across the living room floor, lost in their own noise. One of them was crying about a controller. The other was pretending not to care. The youngest had glitter on her face and no idea how it got there.
I should’ve taken a picture. But I didn’t.
I just stood there, holding a spatula I didn’t need, watching my whole life happen five feet away from me.
Chris looked over his shoulder and smiled like we’d won something. Like we were already safe. Like we hadn’t spent the last six months budgeting groceries and bargaining with God just to make rent.
He said, “Look at this chaos. You believe this is ours?”
I remember laughing. It came out too loud, like I didn’t know how to hold it right.
“Barely,” I said. “I still expect someone to come knock on the door and repossess the joy.”
He walked over and kissed my forehead, greasy hands and all.
“They can’t. It’s paid off. With sweat and spite and whatever’s left in that bank account of yours.”
“You mean the one with $27 and a Redbox charge from 2016?”
“Exactly.”
He called it “our kingdom,” that apartment. Four rooms and a view of a parking lot, and still—he made it feel like a castle.
Later that night, after the kids finally gave up their war and went to bed, we lay on the couch with our legs tangled like roots. We didn’t talk about bills. Or work. Or the hundred things we were both pretending not to worry about.
Instead, he said:
“If I ever go, promise me you’ll burn the place down.”
I laughed again. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“I’m serious,” he said. “Don’t stay here waiting for me. Don’t haunt it. Burn it. Build something better with the ash.”
I kissed him on the shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He didn’t answer.
Just hummed that same tune from the kitchen, soft and low, like a lullaby for a future I wasn’t ready to name.
She doesn’t ask why I sleep on the couch now.
She just starts leaving a blanket folded on the armrest before bed, like a silent agreement neither of us signed.
I wake up late, later than I should. The light coming in through the dusty blinds is that unforgiving color that makes everything look exposed and unkind. The TV’s on, but quiet—volume at zero, captions on.
She’s watching some ridiculous kids’ show where everyone smiles too wide and no one ever dies. The kind of thing I used to complain about. Not anymore.
She doesn’t look over when I sit up. Just sips juice from a plastic cup like she’s performing normal for someone who forgot how it’s supposed to go.
“You can turn it up,” I say, my voice cracked like old paint.
She shrugs. “I like it this way.”
A lie. A kind one.
I want to tell her it’s okay. That the sound won’t shatter me. That I’m not that fragile.
But I am. And she knows it.
She knows everything now. More than she should.
She knows I cry in the shower when I think she’s asleep. She knows not to ask about her sister. She knows which drawer has the cigarettes even though I told her I quit. She knows how to be quiet, how to disappear, how to hold her breath when I walk into the room with my face all wrong.
And she knows not to make noise in the morning.
Because sound hurts now. Not like a migraine. Like a reminder. Like the world is still spinning and I’m still not part of it.
She gets up and walks past me to the kitchen. Her feet don’t even thud anymore. That used to drive me nuts—how loud she was. Her joy. Her chaos.
Now I miss it like oxygen.
She opens the fridge, finds nothing she wants, closes it again.
“Want me to make coffee?” she asks, like it’s her job.
She’s nine.
“Nah,” I say. “Not today.”
I don’t say: I can’t stomach it anymore. It reminds me of mornings with him. The way he’d hum while he poured mine. The sound of it hitting the cup used to mean love. Now it just means he’s not here.
Instead, I ask her if she wants to go for a walk later. She says sure, like she always does.
She’s good at letting me pretend I’m still trying.
That’s the part that breaks me.
Not the silence.
The fact that she knows how to hold it for me.
- Writer
