Teri stood to the far side of the front door so Rozlynn couldn’t see her through the peephole. She heard the unlocking of the chain, the double bolt, the key lock; she felt a tightening in her chest. There was still time to leave, slip back into her own life.

Then the door opened an inch.

“Oh!” Rozlynn stepped away from the screen. “It’s you.”

Teri winced. Rozlynn looked terrible. She was at least thirty pounds heavier than she had been four months before, pale and bloated. Her auburn hair, which Teri remembered as her outstanding feature, hung limp and lusterless. Teri could feel her own shoulders sag. She’d never quite imagined Rozlynn would look this awful.

They stood on opposite sides of the screen. Teri asked, “May I come in?”

“Why?” Rozlynn’s retort was immediate.

“So we can talk?”

Rozlynn glanced outward for several moments, then stepped away from the door.

Teri followed her through the den and into the kitchen. Rozlynn nodded toward a chair filled with stacks of newspapers. “Just throw them on the floor.”

Teri looked at the date on the top page. February 23. Three weeks old. She placed them down, then sat. Rozlynn was still standing, leaning against another chair, her breasts, cumbersome and loose beneath her T-shirt. She had appeared regal at the funeral, a tall, athletic woman in a somber, slate-gray suit, bearing a look of quiet dignity.

Rozlynn’s eyes seemed to follow Teri’s; she stiffened and wrapped her arms across her chest, thick forearms on a round belly.

Teri felt her face flush. “I know today is, uh, was Elise’s birthday. I guess I thought it would be even harder today than usual. I just wanted to come by.”

Rozlynn was staring as though Teri were speaking in a language in which only an occasional word could be recognized. “Today hard? Today? Everyday. Today just means Elise still stays twenty.” Her voice was flat. “Anyway, why do you care?”

Teri breathed several shallow breaths. “Of course I care.”

Rozlynn continued to stare, her face expressionless but something hard in her eyes made Teri turn away. She looked around the kitchen. It was a shrine to Elise. There were photographs of her covering the refrigerator, hung on each of the walls, even perched in the windowsill over the sink. Reaching behind her, Teri retrieved her purse and dug around for her glasses. She stood, shoved the pile of papers aside with her foot, and walked to the refrigerator.

Top row, freezer door: Elise as a baby, chunky and bald. Then the toddler, her face beaming with that look of a child who knows that the camera is upon her-again!-because she is the center of the universe. Elise stepping onto a school bus, bearing a conflicted look of terror and pride. In her Brownies uniform. At a dance recital. She had the kind of face that grew older without ever changing-full cheeked, wide-mouthed smile. A child who seemed to know that she was well loved and at peace with her world.

But moving down the refrigerator, things changed. There was one of Elise on what seemed to be a freshman year prom date, standing next to a boy several years older and as many inches shorter. She looked wary, her smile forced. Teri peered closer, then drew back. She knew that expression-glassy, vacant eyes, facial features gone limp. It was a familiar look from the years when Elise occasionally babysat Teri’s kids. The next photo must have been taken at her high school graduation. Here her face had changed, grown angular and pinched. In a flowing graduation robe she was obviously rail thin. Her wrist bones stuck out like knobs, her hair hung limply to shoulders that drooped. One more photo, the one that had appeared in all the newspaper stories, of 20-year-old Elise, home from college for the Thanksgiving Holiday. She looked to be about fifteen pounds heavier and considerably happier than the previous two photos.

“Pretty girl, uh, young woman.”

Rozlynn shrugged her shoulders. “She died pretty.”

Teri flashed momentarily to Elise’s look of horror, the rounded eyes, outstretched arms and her silent scream. Teri felt again the clenching of her own fingers against the unyielding plastic of the steering wheel, the wailing strains of Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” the suspension of time as she slammed on the brakes, skidded, jumped the curb, and banged into Elise’s Honda. Standing here in Rozlynn’s kitchen, she could almost taste, again, the bile that had spilled into her mouth as she helplessly watched the Honda pin Elise against the gas station pump where she stood filling her tank. It immediately exploded, turning the young woman into a full-body flame.

But the photo of Elise with a wide-mouthed smile and full cheeks, that photo, positioned the following day on page one, that picture was pretty. She did die pretty.

Teri moved back to the kitchen table and sat down. Rozlynn leaned in and stared at Teri’s features the way a mother might scrutinize the face of a new bus driver who was about to drive off with her kindergartner.

“Do you understand what happens when you bury a child?” Rozlynn’s voice was low, coming form some place deep inside her throat. “You bury the past, the present, and the future. Time is amputated.” Rozlynn paused, ran her fingers through her uncombed hair. “I still get mail for her-L.L. Bean catalogues, CD clubs, charge card offers, Cosmo. My husband says I need to cancel everything.”

Teri felt like she should say something, anything, but her tongue was too dry to speak.

“I like getting her mail,” Rozlynn continued, her voice listless. “It’s like having her in the house. That’s the hardest part. The house. She’s never coming home. I still listen for the door to open and for her to walk through. Crazy. Almost four months and I’m waiting to finish our last conversation.”

“I know,” Teri said softly. “After my mom died I kept thinking I could talk to her. I think I picked up the phone to call her more after she died than when she was alive…” Teri stopped abruptly.

“May I ask you something?” Rozlynn said.

“Yes.”

“How do you sleep at night?”

“I don’t.”

Rozlynn inhaled sharply, then slowly let out a breath. “I just wondered if you did, if you could.”

Teri could feel her spine straighten, could feel something bubbling up inside her like a blast of heat. It’s not my fault! She wanted to scream. I braked, I swear to God! I put my foot on the brake and tried to stop! But the look of raw anguish on Rozlynn’s face stopped Teri. She slumped forward and put her face into her hands. The position felt familiar; then she remembered how many times she’d seen her mother sitting this way.

They sat for many moments in silence. Teri could hear the March wind rustling against the window. Rozlynn spoke first.

“You have children.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. Two. Remember? Elise actually babysat for them years ago.”

“Ah, yes. She did, didn’t she? Of course, that was before…” her voice drifted. She sliced the air with her hand as though she were waving away a memory. Then, in a husky voice, “You love them.”

Teri’s own voice was a croak. “Of course I love them. I’m their mother.”

“You ever tell them you hate them?” Rozlynn was biting her right thumb cuticle. A tiny pool of blood welled up at the base of the thumbnail. Teri watched, fascinated, to see if it would drip to the tabletop. Rozlynn repeated, “You ever say anything like that to them?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Hasn’t every mother? We’ve all had our moments when we’ve felt it, if not said it.”

A drop of blood fell to the table. Rozlynn put her elbow squarely against it, smearing the blood to a pale stain. Elise had burned too instantaneously to bleed; Teri had walked away without a scratch--not even a bruise to turn green and black.

“By the way, what made you think you’d find me at my home?” Rozlynn asked.

Teri started. She paused, weighing her answer. Truth was, she never even considered that Rozlynn might be somewhere else. “I don’t know. Do you work? I think I knew that you don’t.”

“Actually, you knew wrong. I did work, full time, in fact. I was working for an accounting firm, office management stuff.” She smiled wryly. “Money for college tuition.”

“Oh.” Teri’s mouth felt like cotton and the back of her eyes ached. This was not going at all how she had hoped. Hoped? What had she expected? Forgiveness? Understanding? Her jaw unhinged and she began to babble, knew she was babbling, couldn’t stop herself. “I haven’t worked in years, not since, well, since Jimmy was born. It was just so hard, juggling two kids, work, a husband. I loved those years of being home with them. Didn’t think I’d ever go back. But now, well, I need to do something. I don’t know. It’s so hard to imagine trying to enter the work force after all this time.” She stopped, suddenly aware of the sharp silence. Rozlynn was staring at her with a look that reminded Teri of one of Jimmy’s comic heroes whose glare could burn holes in objects. She stood and pushed the chair back, taking care not to topple the heap of newspapers. “I better go. I just wanted to…I guess needed to…stop by. To see you.” She paused. “I guess I wanted to say…I’m sorry.”

Rozlynn glanced at her sideways. “Sorry?”

Teri clasped her hands and, head down, whispered, “You know, this accident changed my life, too. I can’t sleep or eat. I keep crying…”

Rozlynn slammed her palms against the table and hissed, “Surely you’re not looking for pity from me?” She bolted over to Teri, gripped her shoulders and squeezed with the same frustrated gruffness a mother might show her errant teen. She leaned in so close Teri could smell her breath, stale coffee and unbrushed teeth.

“The last word I ever said to my daughter was ‘bitch.’”

Teri stumbled back. “Oh, Rozlynn…I’m…”

“No!” She held up her hands. “I can live with it.”

“But every mother at some time…” again, Teri stopped.

“Every mother what?” Calls her daughter a bitch and has it be the last word spoken between them? Forever? Maybe every mother thinks it, but that was my last word. I have to live the rest of my life with that.” Rozlynn’s face had grown pale and a small glob of white spittle stretched between her top and lower lip as she spoke. But her voice was calm. “You make sound so simple.” Her voice rose to a squeaky pitch and her face twisted into a sneer as she mimicked, “Of course I love them. I’m their mother. Well, do you know how complicated a mother’s love can be? I don’t even imagine so.”

Teri tightened her lips. Yes, she could even imagine. She flashed to an image of her mother slumped at the kitchen table, eyes glassy and vacant, nightgown strap falling from her shoulder, cradling a near-empty bottle as Teri quickly ushered out the after school visiting friend. Teri knew all about complicated love. She glared at Rozlynn. Neither woman looked away. Only when Teri realized that her fists were clenched and her neck taut did she will herself to let it go. She leaned her head forward, feeling the stiff pain in her shoulders. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, to loosen herself.

And then she was there again, re-living the scene as she did each sleepless night: the decision to run back into the house for a jacket; to turn left instead of going her usual route; to slam to a stop at the yellow light-God damn it-to slam to a stop at the yellow light. All the seemingly inconsequential decisions. Like that chaos theory that a butterfly unfurls its wings in China, takes flight, and evokes wind currents that reverberate all the way to the other side of the world. All the way to a filthy kitchen where dust and clutter blend with grief and guilt to create a sorrow no amount of time will ever completely erase.

When she looked up, Rozlynn had moved away and was shuffling down a darkened hall, presumably toward her bedroom. Without turning back, Rozlynn lifted her hand and seemed to wave her away. Teri stood, immobilized, surrounded by the shrine to Elise. “Bitch” echoed in her head, a word as irrevocable as the slamming of brakes.

Minutes later, Teri sat in the car, trembling, seatbelt on, keys in hand. Glancing toward the house, Teri thought she saw a shadow move out of the window area. How many times had she herself stood surreptitiously looking out a window, waiting for a delayed school bus, a late car-pool driver, a date, to bring her children safely home. The mother’s hallmark: the peering out and waiting, that pinch in the chest as minutes tick by, knowing that nothing is wrong, it couldn’t be, yet feeling for that moment the certainty of vulnerability.

Teri turned on the ignition and remembered suddenly another car, another time-her mother weaving on the road, Teri’s fingers clenching the seat in fear. Later, safely in bed, her mother leaned in close and whispered, “Can you forgive me?” And Teri, even as a child, knew that forgiveness, like love, was complex and layered.

She drove slowly home, retracing the familiar route. It was not so many years ago when she drove these streets to pick up Elise to baby-sit.

“Please don’t use Elise, Mommy,” Carly would beg. “She’s creepy and she smells funny.”

But occasionally Teri would call Elise to sit. She certainly wasn’t a first choice, but she lived so close, not even two miles away, and she was always available, eager even. So when everyone else on the list had said no, Teri would call, and Elise would say yes. Teri could even leave the kids alone, zip over and pick her up, be back in ten minutes. Her husband never knew, would have been horrified. Ten minutes alone? Teri, how could you? He’d have railed if he’d known. How could she? Well, Hon, when it takes longer to bundle them up, get the little one into the car seat, the older one can’t leave without a favorite stuffed animal, when the getting ready takes longer than the drive itself, then you do all kinds of things that nag a bit but feel just fine once nothing bad comes of it.

Later, probably a full year after the last time Teri called her, she learned that Elise was in a juvenile detox unit. Teri shuddered, thinking about the number of times that Elise had come to their house seeming kind of spacey and, yes, reeking of something yeasty-sweet. Times when freedom felt more pressing that listening, really listening, to what her kids were trying to tell her. Times when she called upon a lifelong pattern of closing her own clear eyes to glassy, vacant eyes.

So when she’d fully realized, in the emergency room, the identity of the person behind the silent scream and flame, Teri’s first reaction had been disbelief, the anger. How dare it be Elise? How dare she reenter their lives like this? She could still see Elise’s mocking glance last year when they’d bumped into one another at the movies. Teri had reintroduced herself to the young woman. Elise had looked at Teri, turned to her friend and rolled her eyes and laughed about he idea of her babysitting. Teri’s reaction had been immediate and visceral: she did not like this girl. That evening, she’d told Carly about the encounter. With the quick-tongued surety of a teen Carly had retorted, “Well duh, Mom. What did you expect? She was always a creep.”

And that was it, the last time Teri gave the girl a thought, until four months ago when Teri took Elise’s life, and Elise took Teri’s.

Teri pulled her car into the driveway. She could tell by the bike on the porch and the car in the garage that the kids were home. Safe. She felt her body go limp and her eyes tear up. “It could happen to anyone, Mom,” her kids kept reassuring her. “It was an accident, Teri,” her husband nightly consoled. Only, it hadn’t happened to anyone, it had happened to her…because of her. Teri placed her face in her hands, besieged by a remorse so deep it made her physically ache. Then she heard again the echo of her mother's voice, "Can you forgive…?”

Teri opened the car door, stood and stretched her arms, reaching out toward the spring day sky. Slowly, she walked up the driveway to her home. In four years, God willing, Carly would be twenty-one, older than Elise ever lived to be. Five years after that, Jimmy would be there, too. Maybe by then Teri would even be a grandma, and Elise would still be dead.