Emma had a fever.
Grace was asleep wearing my baseball cap.
Sophie had drawn a purple horse directly in the refrigerator. I stopped breathing.
Clean the marker for 20 minutes.
I changed Emma’s sheets.
I took Grace’s cap.
Then I called the woman and told her we weren’t gonna work.
She had talked about the girls as if it was something that was happening to me.
By then, they were not.
They were mine.
***
Our mother, Reese, never came back.
Not for birthdays.
Not for Christmas.
Not even when Emma broke her arm at the age of nine.
Not even when Grace won a statewide essay contest.
Not even when Sophie graduated as the best in her class and feign that she was not looking for me in the crowd until she saw me standing.
***
Twenty years passed.
Then I got my birthday number 43.
Sophie was usually 20 minutes late with candles that no one needed.
