The first time it happened, we were shocked and afraid.  Was she ill?  Would she die?  What could be done about it?  We wanted to cure her.  But the doctors determined that she was in no danger.  She was a medical oddity, an unusual case, one for the journals.  We sympathized with her, and hoped it would get better with time.

But it didn’t get better, and a strange thing began to happen.  We didn’t want to upset her, certainly.  But we would not immediately rush to comfort her.  When she fell we would tell her that pain is a part of growing up (and maybe we would be a little quick to pour iodine on her cuts.)  When she was afraid we would tell her there are much worse things to be afraid of in the world, don’t worry.  We left her alone a lot.

At what time did we learn to say hurtful things disguised as nonchalant observations?  At what time did we discover that we could say things that were not insulting, but left a stripe across her back all the same?  When we would make a move to help her, she learned to tell us that she did not need our help, could stand on her own.  There was a wedge between us already, and we would not make contact with each other.  We understood, but we grew weary of what we called her attitude.  We grudgingly accepted what we considered her faults.

As a young woman she reached out to others, but they all treated her the same.  She sought out the ones who wanted her the way that we always wanted her, or everyone was the same at heart.  It amounts to the same.  She would find no peace with those others, either, so she receded into herself, made into a statue by some wild and slow alchemy.  But she was ours, and we would never let her forget that.  Even when we pitied her we couldn’t stand her company.

It was around the time of her thirtieth birthday that it happened.  No one could have predicted it, or we were too much in our own world to see what was transpiring in the world adjacent.  Electric cars became all the rage, and soon that was all anyone was driving.  Somehow we were furious, but eventually we had to accept the new ways.  In a sense, an important distinction between us had been obliterated.  We were like everyone else again.  We struggled to fit in, but came to terms with the new order.

I would have thought that she’d be overjoyed.  It was not possible to be proud of ourselves.  Having no more use for her, we let her be alone in a house in the country, just as she wanted.  She was through with us.  Perhaps she didn’t know how to be around people anymore, or didn’t know how to want to.  I think of her, alone in that house for weeks, and then months, silently.  We never gave her anything she needed, and when we gave her her life back, it was too late to transform it, by any alchemy, into a life.

She did not know how to live.  She did not know how to not be needed, to not be despised.  When the police called, I was the only one who came to see her.  At the foot of the cliff, on the beach, with her body broken, I thought I might not even recognize her.  But it was not her body that seemed strange.  I did not understand why her face seemed so alien to me.  Then I understood, finally.  She was smiling, lying in a puddle of gasoline.  I do not know what she felt, at the end.  Perhaps it was freedom, or perhaps something else.  That was a few days ago now and I have been tidying up her house for sale.  I have called a few of the others; they are arriving today by electric car.  Below me, the spot where she sought her final rest gleams like a rainbow.  I do not know what I will tell them.