I don’t tell Lilia.

  I go home and I sit on my bed and I think about it until the room goes dark and I haven’t turned the lights on.

  The options are clear and none of them are good. Tell Lilia and make her carry something that isn’t hers to carry. Leave without explanation and take from her something she doesn’t know she could lose. Stay and carry the secret alone, every conversation from here on built on a thing I’m not saying.

  Option three, I write in my notebook. Stay and carry it.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I look at that.

  But she doesn’t know what she’d be losing if I left. And I know exactly what I’d be losing.

  I think about the soup. About Lilia saying she’s always just there.

  That was supposed to be me, the thought comes, small and quick. That life. That mother who sits outside the door. That was supposed to be mine.

  I don’t let it finish. I know it’s not Lilia’s fault. Lilia did nothing. Lilia was born into a life and loved the people in it the same way I would have if things had been different. I cannot be angry at her. I’m not angry at her.

  I’m just so tired of standing outside the window.

  I close the notebook. I text Lilia something small. She responds immediately, warm and easy, and I stare at her name on my screen.

  She’s my sister, I think. She doesn’t know she’s my sister.

  I put my phone down.

  I pick it up and respond.