My Sister Said I Didn’t Count and Seated Me by the Trash at Her Wedding So I Left a Small Silver Gift on the Present Table

to drive everyone under the nearest awning. A woman pressed in beside me and said my name the way people say it when they are surprised and slightly wary at the same time.

Her name was Alina. She had worked with Laya two years earlier, and I had met her briefly on one of the handful of occasions I had visited my sister in the city, standing in the background continue reading …