Sarah's past was disappearing, but it was still there. It was huge and it was growing. But she was stepping out of it. She was dunking her toes in the present. It was cold. It made her feel alive.
Her past was so vivid that only now was her present even approaching its reality, its solidity. She remembered being in her upstairs bedroom. She can feel the cotton sheet above her, tight on the left side where it was still tucked in. She can feel the weight of her quilt, which holds the weight of her mother's childhood and her grandmother's labor, but that one spot where it actually touches her, where it brushes her chin, is soft and light as feathers.
Daddy has just left the room. He kissed her good night. He does not always do this. She can still feel his lips, almost perpendicular to hers. The whole bulk of him, and the tremendous shadow that he cast on her, all funneled to that one point, his lips, and pressed onto her lips.
That very day she had a conversation with Jane, her best girlfriend.
Sarah thinks maybe Daddy has just given her a baby. She swallows and swallows, trying to get that feeling on her lips to go into her stomach.
"I will hold you every day," she whispers like a prayer. "I will tell you stories and I will feed you every day."
But she can't feel it in her stomach. Eventually, it just evaporates from her lips. She silently asks herself a question that she will ask again and again throughout her life. "What did I do wrong?"