I was nineteen when my father told me my aunt Amanda was moving into our house.

My mother had been dead for eleven months, and grief still lived in the walls.

Her cardigan hung behind the laundry room door.

Her chipped blue mug stayed tucked behind the nicer cups because I could not make myself move it.

The left side of the living room couch still dipped where she used to sit every night with a blanket over her knees and a crossword in her lap.

Some houses carry noise.

Ours carried absence.

Dad made the announcement over breakfast like he was reading a weather update.

“Amanda is going to stay with us for a while,” he said, stirring his coffee.

I looked up from my cereal.

“How long is a while?”

He did not meet my eyes.

“Indefinitely.”

For a second I thought I had misunderstood him.

My aunt Amanda was my mother’s younger sister.

She had her own apartment across town, a good enough job in retail management, and a talent for making every room she entered feel slightly more competitive than it had a moment earlier.

“Why?” I asked.

“She has her own place.”

Dad exhaled slowly, as if I were forcing him to say something awkward instead of something unthinkable.

“She’s lonely,” he said.

“I’m lonely.

We’ve been spending time together.

It makes sense.”

The spoon slipped from my hand and rattled against the bowl.

“You and Amanda?”

He finally looked at me then, expression steady, almost irritated by the fact that I was not instantly adaptable.

“Life is complicated, Ruth.

One day you’ll understand that.”

No, I thought.

Some things are not complicated.

Some things are just wrong.

But my father had become a man who interpreted disagreement as immaturity, and I had become the daughter who knew arguing with him only guaranteed I would lose twice—once in the conversation and again later when I replayed it in my head.

So I said very little, and Amanda moved in the following weekend.

At first, she was careful.

She arrived with polished luggage, vanilla perfume, and a softness in her voice that felt almost convincing.

She hugged me at the door.

She said I looked just like my mother at nineteen.

She insisted I stop calling her Aunt Amanda because we were all adults now.

When Dad was home, she was patient and warm.

She asked about my community college classes.

She asked about my café job.

She offered to help me proofread a paper and told Dad he should be proud that I was working and studying at the same time.

For a few weeks, I let myself believe maybe I was the unreasonable one.

The whole arrangement still made my skin crawl, but she was trying.

Dad seemed lighter than he had in months.

The house was not happy, exactly, but it was functioning.

Then one night I came home after two closing shifts at the café, kicked off my shoes, and sat on the couch for ten minutes before folding a basket of clean laundry.

Amanda walked in, glanced at the overflowing basket, and said, in a voice so flat it startled me, “You are every bit as useless as your mother was.”

I stared at her.

“What?”

She picked up one of