Willa asked about her sisters constantly, and Maren’s answers are short and neutral and slightly evasive, and she never once asks Willa to pass on a message, which is either restraint or self-protection and I cannot tell which.

She is careful about herself, right up until she is not.

There are perhaps eleven messages in three years where something real comes through, and I read all eleven twice in that truck.

From 2023, after Willa asked her directly why she left:

I’m going to answer you honestly and you’re not going to like it.

I left because I could not do it.

Not because your father was poor.