Chapter 7
The living room was empty that afternoon. My dad was out splitting wood behind the cabin and my stepmother had taken my stepsister into town for groceries, or at least that's what she'd said. I heard the front door click and the car pull out onto the county road. I stood in the hallway for a minute listening to the house settle. Then I walked into the living room and looked at the mantel.
I'd passed that stone fireplace a thousand times. I knew the patterned rug under my feet, the flat-screen above the mantel, the way the warm light hit the wood paneling at three in the afternoon. But I had never really looked at the photos.
There were five of them in matching dark frames. The first was me as a baby on my dad's chest on the couch in this same room, before the new rug. The second was me at maybe six, missing my front teeth, holding a fish at the lake. The third was my dad and me on the front steps, his arm around my shoulders, both of us squinting into the sun. The fourth was my mom before she left, younger, laughing in the kitchen. The last was just me last year in my light grey sweatshirt, school picture.
My stepmother wasn't in any of them. My stepsister wasn't either. Not a single frame had been moved to make room. Not a single new frame had been added.
I stepped closer. Dust on the mantel where the frames hadn't been shifted in months. The wood behind them a little lighter where the sun hadn't faded it. I could see my dad's handwriting on the back of one that had fallen forward once, a date in Sharpie. I understood something all at once and it made my chest feel tight. This wasn't just a mantel. It was a timeline that stopped before they got here.
I heard the car again sooner than I expected. I moved back to the hallway like I'd been caught. My stepmother came in carrying paper bags, my stepsister behind her holding a gallon of milk with both hands. My stepmother stopped when she saw me near the fireplace.
"Were you looking at something?" she asked.
I shook my head. "No."
She set the bags on the kitchen counter. Her mouth was a tight line. She glanced at the mantel the way you glance at something that bothers you every day. My stepsister set the milk down and went straight to the rug and sat on the edge of it, not the middle, her knees pulled up. Like she was trying to take up less space.
Later that evening after dinner, I was in the living room pretending to watch TV while my dad did dishes. My stepmother stood by the fireplace with a dust rag. She didn't dust. She just held it and looked at the frames.
"You ever think about updating these?" she asked my dad, loud enough for me to hear. Her voice was casual but her knuckles were white around the rag.
My dad dried his hands on a towel. "What do you mean?"
"I mean it's been a year," she said. "Mia lives here too now. She asks me why there are no pictures of her on the wall. She feels like a guest."
My stepsister was in the hallway, out of sight, but I could see her shadow. She wasn't moving.
My dad looked at the mantel, then at my stepmother. "They're old photos. I haven't gotten around to printing new ones."
"That's not the point and you know it," she said, quieter now. "Everything in this house is still exactly how it was before we came. His room stays his room. His pictures stay on the wall. Where do we fit?"
I felt my face get hot. I wanted to say something but I didn't know what. I looked down at the patterned rug and counted the diamonds in it.
My dad said, "You fit where you are. This doesn't have to be either-or."
But my stepmother shook her head. "It does, though. Don't you see that? Every wall tells her she's temporary. Every shelf tells me I'm borrowing someone else's life." She looked directly at me then, not mean, just tired. "And when I say Mia doesn't feel comfortable, maybe part of that is she doesn't feel like this will ever actually be her home while everything stays frozen for him."
My stepsister stepped into the doorway. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked at the mantel, then at me, then away fast.
"I don't like not being in any pictures," she whispered to her mom, not to me. "The girls at school have family walls."
Her mom put an arm around her. "I know, baby."
May you like
I sat there in my grey sweatshirt with my hands between my knees and finally got it. My stepmother didn't just want me gone because she thought I was looking at her daughter. She wanted me gone because as long as I was on the wall and on the rug and in every room, there was no room to put her daughter there instead. It wasn't only about safety. It was about belonging. And she thought the only way to make space for one kid was to remove the other.
My dad didn't answer right away. He looked at the five frames, at my stepsister's face, at me. The TV kept playing to no one. The warm light from the lamps made everything look still and permanent, which was exactly the problem.
