“You dirty slut!”

That’s sisterly love for you. Thank God she’s only joking with me.

“Not anymore,” I joke back. “This one could be serious.”

“You don’t waste a minute, do you? Joel’s body isn’t even cold yet and you’re off doing. . . actually, are you gonna tell me about it?”

“That’s a big fat no, sis. And I was the cold one, remember? The frigid, sad bitch who never wanted my boyfriend to touch me. That was my official title. I can’t be that girl and be a slut, right?”

“Well, Joel’s gone, and I, for one, am really proud of you, you know that?”

This isn’t quite what I was expecting when I told her that I met an amazing new guy and slept with him, but I’ll certainly take it. “You’re proud I fucked a new guy? Proud of what?”

“I’m proud that you’re going after something you know will make you feel happy. Isn’t that what all relationships are, at their core? We can call them whatever we want—marriages, engagements, serious relationships, whatever. But the only reason to be with someone else is because there’s happiness involved. You broke up with that loser and now you’ve found the right guy.”

“Correction,” I interrupt. “That loser broke up with me, and I don’t know if I’ve found the right guy. I’m not even sure what that means. But I do know that I’ve found a great guy. Seriously, he’s out of a book. You’d love him.”

“I’m sure I would,” she says. “But how about mom?”

“I’m keeping Brandon as far away from she-who-birthed-us as possible.”

Carla shoots me a disapproving look like she always does when I say things like that. “She’s not that bad, Lia. You exaggerate.”

That’s Carla’s tagline. She’s not that bad is her dismissive line for mom, and he tries, Lia is her line for good old dad. Neither is true, but I don’t begrudge her her opinion. We weren’t really raised by the same parents. Technically we were, but our experiences were so different at times that I don’t blame her for not having the kind of resentment that I have, so I always take her criticism of my feelings towards them with a grain of salt.

“Regardless, I’ll keep him safe for now.”

My parents are weird people. Despite all of mom and dad’s intelligence and education, they lack even the most basic skills when it comes to understanding their daughters. They barely get Carla, and she’s the normal one. Imagine how alien they thought I was when I started showing the signs of mental illness at a young age. It was a shit show. It still is, only now I can mostly avoid hearing any direct criticism if I want to—the perks of not living at home any more.

Mom is much worse than dad. Why is that always the case?

At least he was raised by Nana, who’s easily the best person I’ve ever known. Some of that was bound to rub off on dad. But mom’s a different animal. I never knew her parents, and seeing at how she turned out, that’s probably a blessing. Mom’s a good person at heart, she just doesn’t know or understand me. And when I say that I’m not even talking about her inability to get my mental problems, I mean that she’s never gotten me—not my personality, or who I am overall. We’re just different people who happen to be related.

I never wanted to go to an Ivy League school, or play Lacrosse at a high level, and I sure as hell never wanted to go through the grind of taking five Advanced Placement classes my junior year of high school. But I didn’t have much say over my own life back then. Maybe I still don’t, but at least now I can make my own bad decisions. Back then I was the trophy daughter, a showcase for my mom’s fancy friends who she wanted to impress. I was that girl in the Joy Luck Club whose mom forced her to play piano.

“Dinner’s at 7:00 tomorrow?”

“As always,” Carla says, taking a sip of her drink. “Some chit-chat. Peter and Dad trying to out-guy each other by talking sports, and then we eat dinner, Gilmore Girls style.”

“I wonder how long it’ll take before she asks about Joel and me?”

“Do you want me to tell her?”

“Thanks, but no. That’ll be even worse. Then she’ll judge me for not telling her personally. I’ll do it myself.”

“That’s probably a better choice. I didn’t even think about the fact that she didn’t know. No one liked him very much, Lia. I think I can say that to you now. He was a nice enough guy, but I think in this situation she’ll actually be happy.”

It’s true. Mom never took to Joel. Apparently, a lot of people didn’t. “I guess we’ll find out.”

After lunch with Carla I head home, with thoughts of my family running through my head. My parents didn’t make me sick, but they sure as hell got the insanity rolling. The few times I’ve tried to express that to my mom all I get back is the same phrase—Oh, Lia, that’s just your therapist talking. She refuses to accept any degrees of responsibility for how I turned out, despite the fact that she’s my parent. I guess she thinks that responsibility means blame, even though I don’t blame either of them for what I’ve become.

Still, I wonder if I had had supportive, loving parents, if my high school and early college issues would have been a blip on the radar of my life—a past that I could be looking back on now, rather than having it still be my reality. So why am I heading over to their house tomorrow night?

Despite their general detachment from emotion and overall weirdness, they insist on having family Sunday dinner once a month. It’s the only thing they ever cared about that wasn’t for outside appearances. This was just something for them. I guess it’s their way of feeling like we’re a closer family than we are, who knows? I have too much going on to analyze it right now. But what I do know is that I have to pick up a bottle of wine—Mom likes rosé, so that’s what I’ll be getting—and some kind of dessert. Carla is making a side dish and bringing her husband, Peter, who I love. The two of them keep me sane at these dinners, which, left to their own devices, can end up devolving into my parents probing as far into my life as possible, judging just about everything I have going on. Carla and Peter are my buffers to my parents’ particular form of crazy.

I pick up the wine and spend the rest of the day working on some cases for work. I’m dreading tomorrow like always. I just hope they don’t ask too many questions.