I signed it because it was, for the first time in seven years, simply the truth — an accounting of what I owed and what I had to become.

Amina had handed me, on a hospital bed, both the door out and the map back, and left the choice entirely to me.

I chose the map.

I have wondered whether she expected me to.

I do not think she did.

I think she had prepared herself, over years, for the likelihood that I would fail this test as I had failed every smaller one before it — that I would flinch, or make excuses, or find some way to protect my mother even now.