Caitlin could remember it. Down by the river at Sassafrass, she had heard Liam’s footsteps before she saw him. Sitting by the tepid green water, she watched him take Sharn in his arms and then reach out for her too, enfolding both of them in his embrace as he told them that they would leave, together. In the drowsy heat of the afternoon, she thought she had never seen her mother so happy. ‘Why did you have me so young?’ she had once asked Sharn, and Sharn simply said that she had wanted to, brushing aside the question with an embarrassed discomfort that confirmed what Caitlin had always known; motherhood had been forced upon her, and it had horrified her. But when Sharn met Liam, it was as though she finally allowed herself to breathe, not to open her arms to Caitlin, not entirely that, but to live side by side with her without the wariness that Caitlin remembered in each of her senses. Alone in her room at night, Caitlin would sometimes hear them fight. It was, invariably, about money.
What do You think about Names For Nothingness (2012)?
