Page 10 of The Lies We Play

I watch her do it.

I watch my mother take my right hand without thinking, and in the four seconds it takes her to settle on the edge of the mattress, I understand something that makes the room go very far away. Mom has been here for a while.

Long enough to learn which hand is safe to touch.

Long enough to build muscle memory around a daughter who has not been awake to notice.

Long enough that her body knows mine differently now.

“How long has it been?” I ask.

Her face changes.

“Livia—”

“How long, Mom?”

She looks at our joined hands.

Then back at me.

“Three months.”

The words enter me without sound.

Three months?

That doesn’t make sense. That is too long. Too impossible. Three months is: seasons shifting. Three months is bills paid, rooms emptied, lives rearranged. It is enough time for people to change passwords, redirect mail, decide who learns what, who gets access, who gets erased.

Three months is enough time to steal a life. Mine . . . I pull in a breath.

It hurts.

Everything hurts.

I almost welcome it, because pain is information, and information is better than the blank spaces they have apparently been filling without me.

“Where am I?”

“A clinic outside Zurich,” Mom says too quickly, as if rehearsed. “They specialize in cases like yours. Head injuries, trauma recovery, neurological rehabilitation. A friend from Wellesley knew the director. When things became complicated in Westchester, your father and I⁠—”

“Westchester?”

Her fingers tighten around mine.

“You were treated there first.”

“Where’s Halston?”

She stops.

Just like every time I’ve asked . . . well, for months apparently.

My mother has never been good at lying to me. She is good at hosting, fundraising, remembering birthdays, and making grief look tasteful in public. But lying to me? No. I have been translating her pauses since I was old enough to understand that families say everything except the truth.

“Mom.”

She smooths her thumb over my knuckles.