I had sent money faithfully.

I had asked, every single time, how she was, whether she needed anything, whether she was happy, and every single time she had looked into the camera and told me yes.

What I had failed to understand, from eight thousand miles away, was how much a face on a small screen can hide, and how completely a person who loves you can lie to you in order to protect you.

My mother had built a performance for me, a two-year performance of contentment, staged in careful moments in front of a phone, and I had believed it because I wanted to, and because the alternative, that something was wrong that I could not see and could not fix from that distance, was unbearable to me.