And I — God forgive me — I believed her, because believing her was easier than the alternative, and because it did not once occur to me that my own family would give me a reason to need the camera off.

I had spent those months picturing her the way she used to be, curled up on our couch with her hair down, telling me about her day.

I had sent money into that picture.

I had endured Calgary winters for that picture.

And now I stood behind a fence and understood that for months, while I whispered goodnight to a dark screen, the reason the camera stayed off was crouched in a backyard with a shaved head and hollow cheeks, gathering broken glass with her bare hands so that no one would take her food.

Every gentle lie she had told me to keep me from worrying had been, I would learn, its own small act of love — and its own small act of survival, because the people standing over her had made very sure she understood what worrying me would cost her.