It feels intimate—wrong—to be in her bedroom when she’s not home. The duvet is rucked up to expose the wrinkled corner of a sheet. The pretend-gold bracelet I bought her sits coiled at the back of her nightstand, no longer inseparable from her wrist. It looks cheap in this light, childish and flimsy, and my skin prickles with shame.
I turn on the spot, eyes roaming over photos and furniture that seem newly alien, knowing yet not knowing what I’m looking for. This room feels like a foreign country now. Out of bounds. I remember when there were no borders between her space and mine.
Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be, with children and parents?
Guilt stirs as I slide open the bedside drawer to see a black hairbrush, a packet of aspirin, an out-of-date magazine. Turning to the wardrobe, I glide my fingers over the dresses and pretty skirts she never wears anymore. I nose the soft fabrics, her scent trapped in them, like a memory.
Just as I’m about to retreat, my gaze falls on something at the bottom of the wardrobe. A wad of light blue fabric scrunched into the shadows of the back corner. I reach down to pick it up, but as it unfurls, shock makes me fling it away. It hits the mirror and drops to the floor, and I see it again: a dark lake of red encrusted on the front of a T-shirt.
I stand dazed. Heart thumping, I spread out the top on the carpet and stare at the dried blood, trailing my fingertips across the stain.
And that’s the moment when I know I’ll have to do something. The moment, really, that sets it all in motion.