Iris asks questions other people walk past. One day, that will either frighten people or save them. I hope she never lets anyone convince her to stop.
I pressed my hand over the page and wept.
This grief was different. Clean, somehow. Not less painful, but honest. My mother’s voice had reached me at last, not through memory, not through someone else’s version of her, but in her own handwriting.
Clara read over my shoulder.
“She knew you,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I said. “She did.”
The emotional knot I had carried for so long began to loosen—not disappear, not heal completely, but loosen. I had thought I was alone because Jason had built a world where every mirror showed only his version of me.
Fragile.
Dependent.
Forgettable.
But my mother had seen me.
My sister had written to me.
My father had failed me and loved me at the same time, which was harder to hold than hatred but more human than the story I had been given.
