If shed had rules, or a curfew, or a parent who grounded her when he found drugs instead of just taking them away, maybe she could have gone to Yale, maybe she could have had test scores high enough that she could even have said that out loud without the college counselor laughing. Maybe shed be wearing white in the fall, her hair long, and she would have left town and moved to France and done something, anything. Maybe shed be talking to the hospitals nurses station from her house in Montclair, watching through a window as her husband and kids splashed in the pool on the last seasonable days. When Sam had gotten too drunk as a teenager, she came to Pomander, and Leonard let her sleep it off in Alices bed. Maybe parents were supposed to be narcs. Alice had always assumed that he knew everything and trusted her enough not to get in trouble, but maybe he just had never been paying attention, like everyone else.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub