town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you.

I had shattered some delicate dynamic. A multichild household is a pit of petty jealousies, this I knew, and the Nash children were panicking at the idea of competing not just with one another, but with a dead sister.

headed south, the temperature shooting up, the lush forest imposing on both sides.

She wants all relationships in the house to run through her.

It’s impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.

How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow.

It was the most I’d ever heard my mother say about my father. I wondered how many other salesladies had received such casual tidbits about him. I had a quick vision of chatting up all the store clerks in southern Missouri, putting together a blurry profile of the man.

but my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.

Is this what mothers did, wonder if you might need safety pins?