All was very still.

All but the young woman in the corner, who stood like a ghost and moved like a shadow. She was the daughter of the house. And soon she would be gone.

The daughter ran her fingers along a windowsill just to watch dust swirl into the air, because she could hardly stand the stillness. The loneliest she’d ever felt was on afternoons like this one where all activity seemed to dwindle away.

She had never felt as lonely as she did now, though.

From the next room, guitar strings plucked a sad, sweet little melody. It was familiar to her. Everything about the house was familiar, but in the way a stranger you’d pass on the street was. In the way her reflection in the warped mirror between the stairs and the kitchen was.

It would be her brother, playing that familiar tune. Sheltered away in his room, the guitar weeping instead of him. She could picture it: his bent posture over the instrument as he sat cross-legged on the bed, his face turned away from any viewer. This image, too, was familiar in that sort of distant recognition way.

There was a soft ache in her chest as she surveyed the room. Just as her brother did not have the courage to emerge from his bedroom, she did not have the courage to go in and meet him there. Just as her parents slept upstairs, she embraced her subconscious mind that whispered to her that now was the time to leave.

It’s okay, it told her. It’s time to go. They will forgive you.

There was a single suitcase packed and propped against the moth-eaten sofa beside the daughter. Cocooned within it was a letter, a single artifact holding all the promises of the life before her. The life she would embrace as soon as she stepped out the door. It promised freedom. It promised escape. It promised a place where she would be loved.

Nothing in the letter spoke of a sad brother plucking sweetly at his guitar from the next room. Nothing promised the soft shift of her parents turning over in the bed upstairs as they slept. Nothing of the gentle familiarity in the wrongness of her own reflection.

It’s okay, her mind whispered to her.

With the guitar strings weeping quietly behind her,

as she moved through the swirling dust like a shedding skin, the daughter—the sister—stepped out the door and became neither.