Free The View From Who I Was by Heather Sappenfield

off the short road that led to Crystal High, Corpse said, “You were right: I wasn’t ready for a whole day. I’m wiped out.” I hung near the Range Rover’s rear window, wiped out too.
    â€œHow’d it go?”
    Corpse shrugged. “As good as it could, I guess.” She studied the effortless strides of a woman jogging along the plowed sidewalk as they approached her from behind. The woman’s ponytail bounced out a hole in the back of her knit hat. She must have been running a while, because the back of her jacket was rimed white with frozen sweat. Corpse tried to imagine the sensation of that woman’s strides in her own thighs, in the balls of her feet. “I think everyone’s afraid of me,” she said.
    Mom snorted.
    â€œMom?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œHow did Ash and I ever become friends?”
    Mom ran her fingers through her hair, seeming to gather her words with the action. “Back then, Cheryl and I were best friends. We were both new in town. Enchanted with being moms in Crystal Village.” She glanced at Corpse. “We’ve drifted apart over the years. People change. You know?”
    Corpse nodded.
    School had been so busy that I hadn’t had a chance to recover from Corpse touching me as we’d walked in, and I tried to dispel that jolt of her pain by relaxing and letting it drift away. But no. It clung to me.
    Mom followed the frontage road past the ski village. Cars zinged by on the interstate parallel to us. Corpse scanned Crystal Mountain, the colorful specks shushing down its wide white ribbons through the forest.
    â€œI don’t know if I’ll be able to ski anymore,” she said. “Or play soccer. Or hang with Ash.”
    Mom pressed her lips into a line. The same bus we’d taken from the dance pulled out of the Transportation Center, and Mom steered around it. At noon, in the lull between the rush to and from the slopes, it was nearly empty.
    â€œNo more family ski days.” Corpse loosed a high-pitched laugh. Like our family had ever skied together in the first place. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re really trying. I can tell.”
    Mom sighed but didn’t speak, just drove beyond town. The golf course’s white expanse stretched out beside us. I could feel Mom’s mind racing. She swerved into a pullout and stopped where people parked to go climb a frozen waterfall that dove off the red cliffs on the golf course’s far side. Corpse straightened.
    For a minute Mom just looked ahead, but her right eye squinted almost imperceptibly. “Listen,” she said. “I got off track. It started shortly after we moved here, and I could blame your father, but the truth is I have no one to blame but myself. Cheryl fed into it; she’s been miserable in her marriage for years. We had this hateful pact of suffering that must have fed into you girls. I’m sorry, Oona. For everything. Especially that you felt desperate enough to try to kill yourself.” She looked at Corpse with eyes bulging water. Surface tension.
    Corpse willed that water on Mom’s eyes not to give way. Didn’t want to find out she, herself, had no more tears left. “It’s not your fault.”
    The lie seared her tongue. It would burn for Dad too.
    A clumsy skate skier glided past, and Mom watched him. Corpse studied the frozen waterfall, and I wondered why frozen water was sometimes white and sometimes translucent as glass, while water suspended in air was invisible.
    â€œNo.” Mom said. “I’m sure I had a lot to do with it. I know this is hard to understand, but I was stuck for so long. My parents have always been miserable. It just seemed natural.” She shook her head. “When I think that I pushed you to suicide—you can’t have any idea how that feels. There’s that saying about how awful it is when parents outlive their kids. But to outlive your kid