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clattering from below made caught our attention. Light footsteps made their way up the stairs before Harvey even had the chance to get to his feet. The bedroom door opened, and my mother entered, her face creased with worry. Her white hair was dishevelled, and her eyes widened in concern.
    “Sara!” my mom cried as I gave Harvey a thunderous stare. Why had he called her? “Oh, darling. I’m so sorry .”
    She flung her arms around me for a moment, and I barely registered the light squeeze, her attempt at comfort. It was devoid of any emotional intent, lacklustre. At least Harvey’s embrace had been full of real feelings. I tried to shake the mental thought away and instead decided to focus on my mother’s high-pitched blabbering. She would insist on knowing every single detail of Eric’s death, from the moment the police turned up on my doorstep right up until the time I last laid eyes on my husband’s battered body in the morgue. She’d make me relive it. Over and over again, without a thought to how it’d make me feel.
    “It’s OK, Mom,” I answered, waiting for the interrogation to start. I tried to catch Harvey’s eye, but he’d wandered over to look out the window. Trying to be considerate, I guess.
    “It’s not all right, darling,” she reasoned and pushed back from me to look at my face. “You’ve just lost your husband. Of course you’re not OK!”
    Her words sank into me. She was right, I shouldn’t be OK. I shouldn’t be able to hold a conversation, let alone sit upright in bed. Widows were meant to be in a ball of agony, unable to think of anything but the loss of their loved one. I nodded my head and brought my gaze down, just as my twin sister, Anita, came hollering at me. Her loud, whiny voice cut through the migraine that was beginning to settle in my skull.
    “Oh my gosh, Sara!” she screeched. She flopped down onto the bed and placed her handbag down on the carpeted floor. “We were all so worried about you.” At the age of thirty-two, my sister lived the perfect life I’d dreamed of; she had a normal husband and two wonderful kids. My niece and nephew meant the world to me, but my relationship with Anita was always teetering on a knife’s edge as the years went by. She criticised every aspect of my life, and though she never quite got around to saying it, I knew my mediocrity made her feel better about herself. If I fucked up, she would insist on telling me how she would’ve handled the problem, but then again, she wouldn’t get herself into the messes I somehow managed to get myself into. “Married an abusive husband did you?” she’d say, “Well that was silly of you, wasn’t it? You must’ve done something to provoke him…”
    “I’m sorry we couldn’t be there yesterday,” my mom said. “Your stepfather had a work thing, so I had to wait till Anita could bring me. And then we had to find a sitter for the grandkids, of course.”
    “It’s OK,” I reassured her again, pasting a weak smile on my face. It was probably best they hadn’t arrived last night, I thought. They would’ve hovered around and pestered me with their lukewarm, drama-induced sympathies.
    Facing away from me, my mother looked over her shoulder and sent a grateful but cold smile towards her stepson. “Thank you for looking after her, Harvey,” she said, her voice taut and forcibly polite.
    “No problem, Victoria,” he replied without looking at her. I could feel the tension in the room rise and felt helpless to do anything from my weak position in the bed. Trapped between my mother and vile sister.
    “Well, we’re here now. There’s no need for you to stay,” my mother continued.
    My mom divorced my father a long time ago, and there’d been a string of relationships, and more than a few marriages until she met Harvey’s father, Russell. But my mom and Harvey had never seen eye-to-eye. He saw her as just another gold-digger, a woman who used marriage as her meal ticket. And like a