Last Sunday I wandered into a half-empty cinema.
A feature film.
An Italian summer of freshly thrown clay and figs bruising in shallow bowls.
The mother yells at her daughter and the daughter yells back.
Voices cracking through the kind of citrine light that signals warm familiarity.

Mother says:
I know you.

Mother says:
I’m only telling you the truth. Would you prefer I lie?

Mother says:
Why can’t you be more like your [sister] [friend] [mother]?

Daughter—sharp as scattered shells—says nothing for a moment.
A shifting tide in a hurricane.

Daughter whispers:
Do you even like me?

Daughter whispers:
…I wish you would like me.

We used to fight this way.
Fraught edges of words hanging off the constants of your counter-points.
Each sentence catching beneath the surface,
caught in the undertow of it all.

There is something inherently possessive in the word her.
A genitive stitched into the language between her mother and her daughter.
An inescapable current passed down like DNA:
salt threaded through blood, flowing through veins.
Kinship colliding like waves, adrift inside the same pronoun.

What does it mean to not be known by the person who first named you?
A mother who held one hand in yours,
the other at your throat.
Perhaps that is the cruelty of mothers and daughters:
how deeply they belong to one another.

The film did not offer that kind of softness.
It was closer to something like us.
Every conversation a return to the same sharp shoreline—
every word breaking against it.

Daughter says:
You don’t even know me!

Daughter says:
Why are you so passive-aggressive?

Daughter says:
I’m sorry I’m not the daughter you wanted.

Mother replies:
I love you the only way I know how.

Last week I bought Maya Angelou’s Letters to My Daughter at the thrift store down the road.
She writes to children who are not hers, and still calls them daughter.
As though the word itself belonged to a wider expanse.
As if ‘daughter’ means anyone who has ever needed a mother.

She writes as though motherhood is both inheritance and erosion.
Fear-based criticism disguised as protection.
Tenderness and ruin passed down through misunderstanding,
like heirlooms sealed in a glass bottle.

No one ever taught us that part.
How to meet each other in the liminal space of yielding coastlines.

In the dimly lit theatre,
I wonder what it would be like to speak to each other like that.
But it is not in our nature.
We meet each other like thunderstorms:
bright and shattering.

Still, after the film, I return home uninvited.
My name called softly from another room,
certain I would answer.

I think that is the closest we ever will ever come
to something like ease.

Mother says:
I only want what’s best for you.

Mother says:
You’ll understand when you’re older.

Mother says:
I’m trying.

Daughter replies:
So am I.

So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad
That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from Dad
- Stick Season, Noah Kahan

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“Dammit.”

She pressed the gas again. Tires spinning and flinging tiny pebbles against the SUV’s underbelly in a mocking clatter. She could almost hear her father’s voice, rough and booming, telling her time and time again that she never kept up with anything for long, not even her car. Her jaw tightened.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” She slapped the steering wheel with the flat of her palms. It was this place, like a time capsule it sucked her back into the teenage version of herself. She had promised she’d never set foot here again, and yet…

The tires hadn’t been replaced since she parked the Rover in her dad’s hardware-shed eight years ago and moved to the city. It wasn’t practical to have a car in the Lower East Side, that is what she told everyone after graduation. She managed the subway on her day-to-day, but really, it was the distance that mattered. The hum of the tracks, the anonymous press of bodies, the way she could disappear into the noise… it made avoiding home easy.

Dust-clouds billowed as she tried the gas again, mixing with the first flakes of falling snow. The swirl of white, twisting and gathering into itself. A master of self-suffocation, quiet and inevitable, just like the night she left Camp Crescent. Except that night there were no snowflakes, just ash.

Claire killed the engine, the hum fading into the dark—leaving her alone with the high-pitched whine of wind threading the branches. Upstate air was always cleaner, colder, sharper. It made her lungs seize with familiarity.

Her thumb brushed over the pack of cigarettes in her coat pocket before she caught herself. Later, she told herself. Not here. Not yet.

She stepped out and rounded the trunk. The metal latch stuck for a moment, resisting as much as she was, before finally giving in with a screech. Inside lay her amber leather duffle she thrifted years ago, the same one she used on overnight bar shifts at The Black Rabbit. Half-zipped. Unorganized. Clothes shoved in between two stolen bar towels and aspirin she pretended was for headaches.

The duffle pulled at her balance as she heaved it onto her shoulder. She could see the camp in the distance, just up the long drive. It looked almost exactly as it had when she left it—towering silhouettes of pines crowding the edge like a barrier, the distant lake glinting through branches, the cabins sagging under the weight of too many winters unmaintained.

It felt haunted. Frozen.

Claire found her footing on the edge of the drive, the hiking boots she borrowed from Saint Mary’s lost-and-found gripping the edge of the forest better than the road itself. Ahead, warm light glowed from the main cabin windows. Figures moved inside, shifting shadows dancing against the firelight. Her stomach knotted.

Lila would be holding court. She could feel it before she even saw her. Perfect composure, even now. Gwen’s death hadn’t softened her. If anything, it had hardened her resolve to control the narrative.

As if they owed the camp something.

As if Gwen belonged here more than anywhere else.

Claire let out an unsteady breath. Gwen did belong everywhere, in the way bright people do. People with the kind of charisma and warmth that inspires others to orbit them. But memorializing her here? It felt cruel in a way. A mockery of the day that upended all their lives.

She tightened her grip on the duffle and made her way toward the cabin. Each step crunched over frost and dead pine needles, the cold biting through her boots. The closer she got, the heavier the air felt, suffocating and dense. Claire squared her shoulders as she reached the porch steps, tamping down the rising panic the way she’d been doing since she was seventeen, and stepped inside the cabin.

—

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The heat hit her first.

Woodsmoke and sweat curled through the air in swirls, condensed by every inhale. The smell of pine resin and damp wool still wafted off the cabin itself, a permanent marker left unchanged since their time there. The fireplace seemed a bit too alive for comfort; flames jumping and licking up the small chimney, lighting up the walls of the large cabin and casting shadows that made the mounted canoe paddles and elk antlers seem almost animated.

Conversation dipped when Claire stepped in; the cool night breeze bringing a gush of wind after her. Not all at once, but enough that she felt it all the same. The way air pressure changes in the onset of a violent storm.

Voices resumed, a fraction louder than before, laughter ricocheting in small groups. She wasn’t sure who all was staying for the memorial unveiling tomorrow. There were probably thirty people total, most of whom she had seen earlier at the church.

She stood there too long, duffle strap digging into her shoulder and the snow from outside melting off her coat and pooling beneath her boots.

“Claire.”

Maeve’s voice cut through the room, deeper than it once was, slightly hardened around the edges. She stood near the long table crowded with bottles of gin and wines that might cost more than her rent. Maeve looked mostly the same apart from her dark brown hair that used to be streaked with bright pink. She gave Claire a small smile, like she wasn’t sure what else to do.

“Hey,” Claire said. Her voice came out flatter than she meant it to, catching a bit from general disuse.

“I didn’t think— I mean, I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.”

“Um, yeah. Neither was I,” Claire replied honestly, “but Gwen and I kept in touch after… well everything. My dad called me a few days ago and I guess it just seemed like the right thing to do.” She didn’t say what she actually thought. That there was no way Gwen committed suicide. Something happened to her, Claire just didn’t know what.

“You’ve never concerned yourself with doing the right thing before,” Maeve bit out before she could think better of it, the sharp scent of gin wafting off her breath.

Claire flinched. The edge behind Maeve’s words cut her as intended.

“Maeve, don’t be such a dick. As I recall, you weren’t exactly an angel back at camp. Remember Jimmy Campbell?” Arabella stepped out from the corridor extending to the small kitchen, hesitating only slightly before pulling Claire into a quick hug. Her dark woven braids swayed forward as she leaned against her, enveloping Claire in the scent of vanilla and jasmine.

Maeve’s jaw fell open a little, a soft disbelieving laugh escaping her. “You promised me we would never bring that up again!” She pushed against Arabella’s shoulder with her palm.

Arabella swayed to Claire’s side linking their arms together, “Well, you reap what you sow, darling. Come one, let’s get another drink.”

Maeve turned, making a beeline for the mismatched cocktail glasses. Arabella leaned close to Claire, “Sorry. Maeve still hasn’t grown out of her habit of saying whatever crosses her mind. Damn the consequences.”

“Yeah I remember,” Claire exhaled, “I guess somethings never change, huh?”

Arabella didn’t reply, only squeezing the place where her palm held onto Claire’s sleeve. “Let’s put your coat up, yeah? Lila converted the old camp offices into bedrooms, so we can just put your duffle in whatever one is empty.”

Claire let Arabella lead her up the oak staircase to the second floor. Each step creaked, the building embracing their familiar weight. The railing was smooth beneath Claire’s palm, worn down by decades of hands. The hallway itself hadn’t changed much. The same wood paneling stretched down the narrow space, each door still bore the same small crooked brass plaques that marked what used to be the counselors offices. It looked like Lila had made a few updates, new light fixtures and a few framed prints of the lake at dawn, but it only made the parts of the building worn by age stand out even more clearly. Camp Crescent had never been good at pretending to be anything else.

“The rooms at the end are empty,” Arabella continued, “Most people opted to stay in town and drive back up tomorrow since the newer cabins by the lake still aren’t finished yet. Lila wanted to keep this building for… I don’t know. Nostalgia, I guess.”

Of course, Claire tried not to scoff.

They stopped in front of a door near the end of the hall. Arabella pushed it open with her hip, flicking on the light. The soft light illuminated the faint blush on her dark cheekbones, “Make yourself comfortable. We’re doing a sort of informal dinner in a little bit. Lila’s version of casual, anyway.”

“That sounds ominous,” Claire dropped her duffle onto the sage quilt, the mattress dipped with a tired sigh.

Arabella cracked a grin, her smile crinkling her eyes around the corner like they were discussing some kind of inside joke, “Yeah. It usually is… I’ll let you settle in.” She took a step back, but lingered in the hallway, “Claire, for what it’s worth,” she paused, fidgeting for a moment, “I am glad you came.”

“Thanks,” Claire said in little more than a whisper.

“Come back down when you’re ready,” Arabella met her eyes one last time before she closed the door with a soft click of the latch. The room itself was well-kept, a small dresser with antique knobs took up the corner space next to the small built-in closet where Claire hung her coat and slid off her boots. On the dresser sat a small ceramic dish shaped like a leaf, filled with a few hair ties and a single bobby pin. The quilt smelled faintly of lavender and smoke.

Nothing out of place.

She sat on the edge of the bed and let her hands fall between her knees. Her fingers sought comfort in her rings, twisting them in slow turns. The silence pressed in, thick and watchful. From downstairs, she could hear the muffled swell of voices and the clink of glass bottles.

Claire stood, crossing to the window. She pressed her forehead lightly to the cold glass and stared out into the dark. The trees crowded too close, branches swaying and whispering to one another. Somewhere beyond them was the trail, the one Camp Director Ann had marked strictly off-limits to all campers and staff. She couldn’t see it from here, but she felt it out there beyond her scope of vision. A reminder.

Claire straightened her shoulders, she wasn’t seventeen anymore. She came back because she chose to.

That had to count for something.

—

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By the time Claire made her way back downstairs, the long table had been cleared of bottles and replaced with food. Roasted vegetables in heavy ceramic bowls, a loaf of bread torn by hand, and a large pot of something steaming and herb-scented in the center of it all—it was all deliberately arranged for the aesthetic. Something to be photographed and admired.

Lila stood at the head of the table, cradling a glass of red wine in one hand, her black sweater fitted just enough to look effortless. She directed people with the ease of someone used to getting their way. Graham hovered near her shoulder, quietly speaking to a man Claire didn’t recognize—a local probably. Someone Graham had some kind of business with.

Lila caught Claire’s eye, a wary but polite smile spreading her lips. The kind of smile that said, we have company, don’t cause a scene. She gestured toward an empty seat halfway down the table. “Claire, come sit! We were just about to start.”

At that, several heads swiveled to where she stood. Claire dodged eye contact as she made her way towards the empty seat. As she reached the chair, she realized who sat on either side of it. Keira sat with her hand knotted in her lap, her mousy brown waves brushing against the back of the chair and exposing her sharp jaw line. She looked up as Claire approached, eyes widening slightly.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” Claire replied, scooting her chair closer to the table.

On her other side sat Niko.

He offered her a small, tentative smile, “Hey.” Claire knew better to assume, but she thought there might be a trace of friendliness there as well.

“Hey,” Claire echoed, “are you staying here for the night?”

“Yeah, Lila insisted. You?”

“Same.” A comfortable silence fell between them as the rest of the table filled, knees knocking against each other in the tight quarters.

Lila raised her glass, voice carrying easily across the confined space “Before we eat, I just want to say how grateful I am that we are all here this lovely evening. Gwen loved this place almost as much as she loved this community. I think she would have wanted us together tonight, remembering her. To Gwen!” Maeve cheered loudly as glasses clinked, solemn nods and sniffles arising from the more sober guests.

Claire kept her eyes on her plate.

Lila sat down next to Graham as the food began to be passed around the table. Conversations layered on top of each other. The man Graham had been speaking to earlier leaned close to Keira, whispering something that made her nod, lips pressed thin. He looked to be in his mid-twenties as well. Earnest brown eyes focused as his hand rested possessively at the small of Keira’s back.

“You’re engaged, right?” Maeve asked Keira too loudly from across the table.

“Yes,” Keira said shyly, “Oliver proposed last fall.”

“Congratulations,” Maeve exclaimed!

Lila raised her glass, “And a wonderful wedding it will be.”

Keira smiled, but it didn’t last. Her gaze settled blankly somewhere in the distance, face wiped of emotion apart from a slight sheen to her eyes. “Gwen was going to be my maid of honor.”

An awkward quiet fell over the room. No one seemed to know what to say.

Niko cleared his throat, “Gwen did always love a wedding, but she was not a fan of formal dinners,” his voice was caring and teasing, “she always used to tell my parents that they would be so focused on the outfits and decorations at their annual Christmas Party that nobody would pay enough attention to how amazing the food was.”

Relieved chuckles scattered the room, tension easing a little. You could tell Niko was an older brother in the way he carried himself; but you could tell he was Gwen’s brother in the way he could make a room feel a bit more comfortable, even under the worst of circumstances.

“That sounds like her,” Claire said mostly to Niko.

“Yeah, it does.” Maeve drunkenly agreed, “She’d have stolen half the bread and disappeared outside. Probably hiking to Old Man’s Cave for a dark lunch.” The room erupted in laughter at the scene, not fully understanding the context. Lila, Keira, Arabella, and Claire went stock still at the mention of the cave. It is almost like they were able to suppress the memories here until Maeve spoke them out loud.

Dinner dissolved slowly, plates slowly stacked as glasses were refilled one to many times. People lingered in small clusters, slowly leaving as the night went on. Someone placed a new vinyl on the old phonograph in the corner, Billy Holiday’s I’ll Be Seeing You echoed through the cabin. Claire slipped away toward the back hallway, hoping to retrieve her coat and get a bit of fresh air.

“Claire. A word?”

Lila stood in the doorway of what was once the camp directors office, body leaning slightly against the frame like she had been waiting there for a while.

Claire released a sigh running her hand through her curls, “Yeah, sure.”

Lila gestured inside and stepped back to make room for Claire to pass before shutting the office door. Claire remembered this room feeling so intimidating as a kid. Director Ann sitting behind the desk disappointment etched on her face, the green desk lamp causing the reflection of her glasses to be eerily tinted. Now it just looks like a typical office space, two wooden chairs separated by a desk and a pile of paperwork.

“I wanted to check in,” Lila folded her arms loosely across her chest, “Make sure we are on the same page.”

Claire leaned back against the desk instead of sitting, “And what page would that be?”

Lila smiled at the challenge in her voice.

“Look, I know that there is a lot of history here. Let’s keep this weekend about Gwen.”

“And what makes you think you know what Gwen would’ve wanted?”

Lila took a threatening step closer, “I’ve done a lot for Gwen over the years. Not that you would know it.”

Claire huffed a soft laugh, “That doesn’t surprise me at all.” She clenched her jaw as she stepped into Lila’s space, “You always preferred keeping us on a short leash.”

A heavy silence followed, Claire took a step around Lila back towards the door. Claire was reaching for the handle as Lila blurted, “You’re angry. I can understand that, but you need to let this go.”

“Let go of what, exactly? The truth?”

Lila drew a sharp intake of breath, “This isn’t about you. It never was.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You made it about me the moment you testified against me. You might be able to walk away from this, but it follows me everywhere Lila. I can’t let go of that.”

Lila’s composure faltered for a heartbeat, “Be careful. You don’t know what you’re reopening.”

“Neither do you.”

Claire met her gaze as they both stood in a silent stand-off. Two people whose lives were cataclysmically altered on the same night eight years ago. Unwilling to risk saying it out loud, but unwilling to bury it all the same.

It's laughing until you wheeze. It's waking up in a country neither of you have been in before. It's skinny-dipping at dawn. It's walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours. It's a big, beautiful, ebullient force of nature. - Dolly Alderton

X,

I finished the book you lent me the weekend before last.

I wrote my thoughts in the margins alongside yours.

My curved black ink in stark contrast to your lean red markings.

I felt like I could hear your words spoken aloud, drifting through my mind like narration of a too sweet daydream.

You were right about the ending; I saw it coming from the third chapter.

Something inside me found comfort in the predictability though.

The same instinct that craves monotonous Sunday’s spent sunbathing on the front porch and the bitter familiarity of espresso on early mornings.

There is something freeing about joys found in mundanity.

The smell of fresh laundry and the feel of too long grass beneath your feet.

Comfort in the absence of capitalism and consumerism.

Sure, the author could have chosen a more unique approach.

A final twist that would leave her readers stunned.

But I think stories like this one hold merit too.

Stories you can return to time and time again for warmth and comfort.

A sense of peace found in the blank space between familiar plot lines.

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As I write to you on this late May morning, crickets hum in the field outside and I wonder how you spend your days.

When the only thing to keep you company is the steady thrum of your heartbeat and the ever present dripping of the kitchen faucet.

Would our story be a whirlwind for you? The kind of narrative that swept you off your feet?

For me, I think our story would be a be a book on the shelf with worn edges and annotated tabs peeking out—every page stained by the sun.

The kind of story I would read over and over again until the words became blurry.

I think of Olympia National Park and the earthly scent of pine trees after the rain washes them clean.

I think of the way you take your toast in the morning, cut into fours with apricot jam.

I think of slight tilt in your smile when I talk to quickly, words rushing out in a tidal wave before calming myself on your steady shores.

I think of the time you told me yellow was your favorite color, and now I see you in the sunbeams that shine through stained glass windows.

I think of you.

And I think our story is my favorite.

I wanna eat pancakes for dinner
I wanna get stuck in your head
I wanna watch a T.V. show together
And when we're under the weather we can watch it in bed
I wanna go out on the weekends
I wanna dress up just to get undressed - Lizzy McAlpine

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