Chapter 4: The Lake House Party

I answered all forty resignations with a single reply.

It said: Accepted.

I did not call anyone back and I did not beg.

The next morning the hospital discharged Alessia with a rib brace under her sweatshirt and a bag of pills, and I took her home to the brownstone.

She was lying on the sofa with her phone when she held it out to me.

"Look at this," she said.

It was Sasha's story, posted twenty minutes earlier.

Music and string lights on a long dock, thirty people from school in swimsuits and sweaters, and a caption that said housewarming.

Sasha stood in the middle of the picture in a gold dress with a low back.

"That's my gown," Alessia said.

I recognized the lake house railing behind her.

"That's the house you were going to get in March."

"Get your coat," I said.

"Mom, I can barely put on a coat."

"Then I'll put it on you."

The drive to Harlan Lake took forty minutes.

Alessia did not talk, and I could not tell if she was holding back tears or pain.

I could hear the music from the road.

Cars lined the gravel drive and both lawns.

I parked across the end of the line so no one could leave in a hurry.

Inside, the house I had bought for my daughter was packed with strangers.

Somebody had spilled a drink on the stairs, and my mother's quilt, the one from the guest room, lay on the floor by the fireplace.

Sasha stood on the kitchen island in the gold gown with a plastic cup in her hand.

She saw Alessia in the doorway, and she stopped laughing.

The thirty faces in the room turned and saw a girl in a brace and a woman holding a folder.

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