I’d had the flicker of a thought, that I didn’t voice to Quinn, that we should extort her instead. Get some money out of this instead of an article. Use the financial gain to somehow bolster both of our careers, our reputations. But Quinn, he is a better person than I am. He wants SNAPea and that whole cohort to fall, to really expose the obscenity beneath the shine. To make certain that all these powerful, rich men keeping each other’s secrets would have their lives ripped out from under them. Like mine had been.

Quinn’s plan was to finally show the picture, what he’d found out about Persephone, to his boss, who would—he hoped—pull his weight to get additional sources, to really beef up the article Quinn had already started to write.

But it’s the weekend and I’m at my mom’s house and Quinn’s big reveal could happen on Monday.

I hadn’t spoken to her in months, since we’d had our giant fight, but she’d invited me up to the Hudson Valley via text saying she missed me, that she knew there was a heat wave coming to the city and that I could cool off up there with her. I’d ignored her, but then my AC broke and the mugginess descended on the city, so I texted her back and said I’d be there.

She welcomes me like nothing has happened and I go back to sequestering myself in that horrible bedroom with the cherry-print wallpaper, the one-eyed swan lamp, the AC turned to sixty degrees, a portable fan oscillating lazily to and fro as well, but none of it is able to penetrate the oppressive heat. I lie on the bed, too hot to move. I feel a fly on me, but it takes too much effort to swat it, so I let it creep on me like I’m a living dead girl.

This time, though, I do accompany my mom out. I go to her morning yoga class with her, try her disgusting smoothies, let her make me a Reiki appointment. During lunch at one of her favorite vegan spots, cashew-cheese that looks like bird shit smeared on a piece of bread, I ask her why she built me the way she did.

“You were born that way, Vera,” she says, taking a long sip of her black tea. “But sure, I wanted you to plant your feet on this earth so you would not be easily swayed. I wanted you to leave your mark, because try as I may have when I was your age, I never did. I never thought you would do it the way you did, though.”

“How did you try?” I ask, pushing away my plate of microgreens.