When I asked what that meant, she explained that the objects were infused with emotional frequencies.
I called them paperweights.
She didn’t speak to me for two weeks.
It was the most peaceful fortnight of my year.
And then there was the chair.
It was a huge, faded burgundy recliner dominating the living room.
It had belonged to our grandfather and had probably been constructed sometime during the Roosevelt administration.
It wasn’t furniture.
It was sovereign territory.
If you dropped it into the Pacific Ocean, China would build an airstrip on it.
Tessa had claimed it during her sophomore year of high school, and in my parents’ eyes, that annexation had apparently become permanent law.
Guests were warned.
Cousins were briefed.
I once watched my mother physically redirect an eighty-year-old aunt with a hip replacement toward a rigid wooden rocker because Tessa might come downstairs later.
Clare knew nothing about this history.
