Margaret Carter wore a pale blue raincoat.
Her gray hair was damp.
She looked smaller than I remembered.
Not physically.
As though she had been carrying something heavy for so long that her body had finally learned its shape.
“Mom?” Liam whispered.
Her eyes moved to me.
The moment she saw my face, she stopped breathing.
I watched my mother’s hand rise to her mouth.
“Oh, Maya.”
I had spoken to her three days earlier.
I had told her I was busy.
I had said Ethan and I might take a trip.
I had lied smoothly.
Just like him.
My mother walked toward the bed.
Then she stopped several feet away.
She did not touch me.
She looked at Liam.
He gave a small nod.
Only then did she come closer.
“May I?” she asked.
Two words.
A question.
Not an assumption.
I started crying.
My mother sat on the bed and wrapped her arms around me as gently as if I were still six years old with a fever.
