I stared at my mother sitting in my kitchen.
My kitchen.
The kitchen where I'd taught myself to cook at twelve because she kept forgetting to buy groceries. The kitchen where I'd made Iris's lunch every morning for the past six years while Diana slept in or didn't come home at all.
And now she was drinking tea there at ten forty-seven on a Friday night like she had any right to occupy that space.
"I need to sleep," I said. "Move."
"Isaiah, we need to talk."
"No. We don't."
"I came all the way from California."
"Nobody asked you to."
She flinched. Good.
I walked to the couch, my couch, the piece of furniture I'd slept on for six years so Iris could have the bedroom. Diana watched me drop my keys on the coffee table with a clatter that sounded too loud in the quiet apartment.
"Where were you?" she asked.
"Work."
"Until almost eleven?"
"I have multiple jobs. You'd know that if you'd bothered asking before now."
