Lily stopped checking whether I’d be irritated if she left mugs in her room. She spread out her art projects on the dining room table again without apologizing for taking up space. She stopped asking if Rachel or Mason might suddenly need her room “for just a little while.” One Saturday I found her lying on the floor in the living room, earbuds in, doing algebra homework with her legs kicked over the couch like a person who believed the house belonged to her body again.
I nearly cried over algebra.
Rachel, for her part, changed too.
Distance from Mom seemed to strip some old reflex from her. She still called more often than I preferred. She still had a chaos streak that attracted trouble the way porch lights attract moths. But she no longer defended the indefensible just because Mom was upset. Once, about two months after the move, she admitted something on the phone that I had long suspected and never heard aloud.
“Mom always acted like you were cold,” Rachel said, “but really you were just the only one who sometimes said no.”