"You can try," she corrected. "Doing it is a longer verb."
Night came in pieces. Zora texted her sister, Camille, three words: Can you come. Camille replied immediately: On my way. Do I bring food or silence. Zora typed: Both. Then, after a pause that felt like standing at the edge of a roof: And brace yourself.
She did not text her mother. Her mother had already been here. Her mother had already left a key on the table like a small metal confession.
Caleb moved his toothbrush, a stack of undershirts, and the charger he always forgot into the guest room with the quiet efficiency of a man who knew that noise would be an insult. He asked if she wanted tea. She said no. He asked if she wanted him to call Ruth and tell her never to contact them again. She said, "Do not manage my mother for me. Manage yourself."
When Camille arrived, she took one look at Zora's face and closed the door behind her with her hip. Camille was older by four years, a nurse with soft edges and a hard center, braids shorter than Zora's, a tote bag already producing crackers and a thermos of ginger tea as if intuition had packed itself.
"Where is he," Camille asked.
"Guest room."
"And Mama?"
Zora's mouth opened. Closed. The word had been waiting in her throat like a stone. "Gone. She was here. She was the one."
Camille sat down hard enough that the sofa cushions complained. "The one what."
"Kissing him. In the nursery. Beside the crib."
For a moment Camille looked like someone had switched off the lights behind her eyes. Then the lights came back as fury, precise and familial. "Mama. Our mother. Ruth Coleman. Teal blouse Mama. Soup-on-the-porch Mama."
"Yes."
"I am going to be careful with my language because you are thirty-seven weeks and your blood pressure does not need my adjectives," Camille said. "But I am furious in a way that will not fit in this living room. And I am also… God, Zora. That is a different category of broken."