Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

it was safer to keep my mouth shut in my own glass house.

In reality, they’d done nothing except make her feel as if she were underwater. Kate kept taking them in the hope she might eventually drown.

Kate had sometimes worried that Amelia’s obsession with books was a sign of loneliness. That if she’d had a sibling or even a dad—if Kate hadn’t been working all the time—that Amelia might have been more fixated on real people instead of made-up ones.

The ordinary things of a living, breathing girl. Now, the precious artifacts of a dead one.