One Saturday afternoon Wendy received an unexpected call from her cousin Lena, who had stayed mostly neutral throughout the fallout. Wendy almost let it go to voicemail. Then she answered.
“Hey,” Lena said, sounding awkward. “I just wanted to tell you… I didn’t get it before. Not really.”
Wendy waited.
“I was over at the apartment helping your mom sort boxes. She was talking about you. About the order and the house and everything. And she said”—Lena hesitated—“she said, ‘Wendy always did best when she was desperate. She gets difficult when she’s comfortable.’”
The sentence landed with chilling familiarity. It was the distilled creed of Wendy’s upbringing. Comfort made her harder to control. Desperation made her useful.
Wendy closed her eyes. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner.”
“Most people don’t,” Wendy said. “That’s how they keep doing it.”
After hanging up, she found Mitchell in the backyard trying unsuccessfully to convince Paige that grass was not a personal insult. She sat on the porch step and watched her daughter lift one suspicious hand, touch a blade, recoil, then try again. The scene was so absurdly peaceful it hurt.