She just looked at Fergus, understanding at last that she had lost the one person she’d built her lies around.

“I didn’t want to end up alone,” she whispered.

Fergus stepped back from her.

“Then you shouldn’t have lied to everyone who ever cared about you.”

I looked at my mother standing in that lobby and waited to feel the old thing — the reflexive pull toward her approval, the child’s certainty that if I could only find the right words she might finally see me and be pleased.

It did not come.