Chapter 1

Aunt Leona, my mother's best friend for a lifetime, was like a stubborn creeping vine rooted into the walls of my home. She looked harmless, but slowly she drank up all the sunlight and air in the whole house.

She had lived with us for a solid six months, and she'd gone from polite at the start to acting like it was all her due.

She used our water, ate our food, and even told me how to run my life.

My husband's eye-rolls, my son pulling away, the low pressure hanging over the house. All of it became the background noise to her presence.

I bore it and bore it, until that night when, a few drinks in, she muttered something to my mother, slurred but laced with poison, and it struck like a thunderclap that split apart every bit of fog in front of me.

The question that had puzzled me for so long, why she'd never married in all her life, was answered in the last way I ever expected, all at once.

My name is Natalie Fox. I'm thirty-five this year, and I work as an administrative supervisor at a company that's neither big nor small.

My husband, George Chavez, is a programmer. He makes more than I do, and he's busier than I am too.

We have a seven-year-old son, Caleb Martinez, who just started first grade.

We'd worked hard in Bayport for ten years, and three years ago we finally won the housing lottery and bought this three-bedroom place, twelve hundred square feet. The mortgage ran over ten thousand a month, but at least we had a home of our own.

To make it easier to look after our son, we brought my mother, who was on her own back home, to live with us.

Once my mother came, life really did get a lot easier.

Every day after work I came home to hot meals, a clean and tidy house, and Caleb's homework already done under her supervision. From the bottom of my heart, I was grateful to her.

But that peace was completely shattered three months later, when a woman named Leona Chavez arrived.

Aunt Leona was my mother's childhood friend, someone she'd known since they were little, her best friend for life.

The way my mother told it, Aunt Leona had had a hard life. She'd dated a man when she was young, and right before the wedding he called it off, and after that she never dated seriously again.

She lived alone in a small county town back home, no children of her own, getting by on the thin wages of odd jobs at a supermarket.

Half a year ago, the supermarket where she worked laid people off. She lost her income, then got diagnosed with a mild slipped disc in her lower back, and money got tight.

My mother heard her cry about it on the phone a few times, and her heart softened.

"Nat, why don't we let your Aunt Leona stay with us for a while? She's all alone back home, it's just too pitiful. She can come to Bayport, see a doctor, get her mind off things. She won't stay long."

That's how my mother put it to me, with a careful, pleading note in her voice.

What could I say?

My mother has been a soft touch her whole life, more devoted to her friends than to her own daughter.

And besides, Aunt Leona really did sound pretty pitiful.

"All right, Mom, tell her to come. We've got a spare room." I agreed without a second thought.

The "for a while" I had in mind was a month or two at most.

I even looked into a few good hospitals in Bayport for Aunt Leona, thinking that once her health was sorted and her spirits lifted, we'd buy her a ticket back.

But I never imagined this "for a while" would stretch out with no end in sight.

When Aunt Leona first arrived, she was still very polite.

She'd rush to go grocery shopping with my mother, clear the dishes after meals on her own, and when she saw me mopping the floor she'd say, a little embarrassed, "Nat, you rest, I'll do it, I'll do it."

Naturally I couldn't actually let a "patient" work, so I'd always press her back onto the couch. "Aunt Leona, you're a guest, just rest."

So she stopped insisting, settling comfortably onto the couch, watching TV while she cracked the nuts I'd bought for Caleb, spitting the shells all over the floor.

My mother followed behind her with a broom and dustpan, cleaning it all up without a word.

Back then I just found it a little awkward, but she was my mother's best friend, after all, so I always gave her some benefit of the doubt.

But little by little, everything soured.

That night George's company rarely didn't have overtime, so the three of us, plus my mother and Aunt Leona, five of us in all, sat around the table for dinner.

My mother had made pork rib and corn soup, Caleb's favorite.

I ladled out a bowl for my son, then a bowl for George.

Just as I was about to serve myself, Aunt Leona, sitting across from me, held out her bowl and said, like it was only natural,

"Nat, dish me one too. Lots of ribs, no corn."

I froze for a second, then quietly took the bowl and filled it for her.

She took a sip, smacked her lips. "The soup's a little bland today. Did you skimp on the salt?"

My mother jumped in at once.

"Really? Let me taste. Oh, it does seem a touch bland. Leona, you like it saltier, let me go get you some more salt."

Aunt Leona waved a hand, poking her chopsticks around the plate, picked up a piece of the roasted eggplant, and frowned again.

"This eggplant's way too greasy. Everyone cares about healthy eating these days. Nat, you young people need to watch it, or you'll have high blood pressure, cholesterol, and sugar before you're old."

I gripped my chopsticks and said nothing.

I'd thrown that eggplant together in a rush after work, and I had used a little extra oil so it would take on more flavor.

Beside me, George set down his bowl, looked at Aunt Leona, and said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes,

"Aunt Leona, if it doesn't suit you, tomorrow Natalie can make you a special dish of your own. Steamed, boiled, guaranteed healthy."

There was a clear barb in what George said, and Aunt Leona's face fell in an instant.

"I... I'm only saying it for your own good." she mumbled, her voice trailing off.

The mood at the table dropped straight to freezing.

Caleb kept his head down, pushing the rice around his bowl, not daring to make a sound.

My mother hurried to smooth things over.

"Oh, come on, it's family sitting down to eat, what's all this talk. Eat, eat, the food's getting cold."

As she spoke, she picked up a big piece of the braised pork I'd set aside especially for George and dropped it into Aunt Leona's bowl.

In that moment, looking at my mother's placating smile, then at Aunt Leona wearing that expression like it was all owed to her, something in my chest clenched.

Was this still my home?