What Never Happened

by Rachel Howzell Hall

Guilt is irrational, Dr. Tamaguchi has told me several times. Guilt demands ransom even though you’re broke, and it demands that you keep it company even though it’s fused to every molecule in your body. Guilt makes you scream, “What more do you want?” even though it’s already taken everything, including your happily ever after.

I’d become the embodiment of sorrow for my church family, a representation of “the worst it could get,” until two planes crashed into the World Trade Center two months after my family’s murders.