Was I a good daughter.

I remember the first time this thought slipped into my head. It was three days after, and Beth came over with all these pamphlets about coping that she’d gotten from God knows where—maybe she’d made them herself from information she’d gleaned from support Web sites—and one of them kept reemphasizing the importance of NOT BLAMING YOURSELF and it hadn’t even occurred to me that maybe I should have been doing that until then.

Was I a good daughter.

Was I a bad daughter.

And then I decided he would have said if I was, he would have said that if he felt it, because it’s not like he had anything left to lose by telling the truth.

And then I pushed all those thoughts straight out of my head. It wasn’t me.

Except something about eliminating myself as a possibility made the question of why he killed himself worse somehow. And was I really sure it wasn’t me? Five days after, I needed to know why. Why. Why. It was a thought-loop. Seven days after was my first visit to Tarver’s. The relief of not finding proof of myself as one of the reasons my father killed himself at that place was huge, even though I couldn’t force myself onto the roof. Still, the question just got bigger.

Worse.

I’m sitting in a bedroom where the paint is peeling, my arms wrapped around myself. I wonder what happened in this place when it was new. Who lived here and what they did, and were they good people. Were they sad people. Are they dead now. Questions about things that don’t matter, so I can push that other question out of my head: was I a good daughter.

It might have been me.

Imagine you’re the weight around a person who jumps.

That you are what keeps them falling.

Culler sits across from me and he is holding my hands. I can’t feel it. My stomach hurts. I think this is homesickness again. It’s familiar. I remember when I was five. My very first sleepover. I thought I’d last the night, but I didn’t. I called my parents in the middle of the night.

My dad picked me up.

“You wanted an answer,” Culler says. I wonder how long we’ve been sitting here. “More than anything, Eddie. That’s what you wanted.”

THESE BURDENS

NOTHING WORTH

STAYING FOR

S.R.

Culler says I can’t stay here in the house forever, but I think he’s wrong. I could stay forever and wonder about being too much of one thing and not enough of another, but he won’t let me. He makes me leave. He pulls me to my feet and walks me out of the house. I feel my body half-heartedly trying to direct myself back, but he won’t let me.

I leave my voice in there, I think. My heart.

“You’re making me nervous,” Culler says. We’re in the car and my head is against the window and my eyes are closed. “I wish you’d say something.”

There is nothing to say. These burdens. Nothing worth staying for.

What could I even say.

We go to a motel on the other side of town, next to a public playground. LISSIE PARK MOTEL. It’s so depressing. It’s this small strip of rooms that faces the parking lot. And I bet a lot of them are homes. I bet some people live here always. Are they worse off than me?

Culler lets me into our room first. There’s only one bed—something I should think about, maybe—and I curl up on it, bringing my knees to my chest while he moves around, taking off his shoes. Setting his camera down. After a while, he sits next to me and puts his hand on my legs.

“There’s still one more place,” he says.

But he sounds as uncertain about it as I feel.