My mother had no answer.
Daniel turned to me.
“How did the fire happen?”
Emily stepped forward.
“Daniel, don’t.”
He did not look at her.
He kept his eyes on me.
I realized something then.
He genuinely did not know.
I had always assumed he did.
Emily and Daniel had been together long enough that I believed the fire would have come up sometime, not because I expected her to build a monument to what I had done, but because it had shaped nearly every part of our family afterward.
The surgeries.
The physical therapy.
The years when I could not move without pain.
The adaptations that eventually became ordinary.
The scars Emily saw every time we were together.
Daniel knew I used a wheelchair.
He knew I had been badly burned.
He did not know why.
So I told him without embellishment.
