She held me snug for a minute, then let me go and opened her book. The difference between my mother and me is that she can read when she’s worried, and I can’t. Her pixie cut was growing out. More gray than before. My fault. She raked her bangs back every page or so with two fingers of one hand. Her hair was getting shaggy down the back of her neck. Not what she should be aiming for, in my opinion. I didn’t particularly want to have a shaggy mother.

You can take a lot in with sideways glances. A mother reading. A mother reading beside her sick daughter. A mother reading beside her sick daughter who the day before sent an email to her long-lost father. A secret does funny things to a person, and not just if you’re found out. Inside your own mind, I mean. It’s a delicious burdensome thing that takes up all the space so you can’t believe that other people, my mother, for instance, shifting in her chair, blinking down at the page, and from time to time reaching out and giving my knee or arm a little press, could not tell. You want to show the secret off and you want to hug it to yourself. Should I have made that joke about turning up on Antonio’s doorstep? He probably wouldn’t reply anyway. Like Grandpa said, I had to be prepared for anything.

I jumped when my mother uncrossed her legs and inserted her bookmark. My mind was stuffed full of Antonio, and my mother’s mind was stuffed full of other things, and neither of us knew what the other person was stuffed full of. She stood up and smiled at me, and I smiled back. Mine was a fake. She beamed her gaze deep into me in a way that used to signal a moment of humor and solidarity but that nowadays was likely to mean weariness or badly concealed fear. Maybe it also meant the guessing of secrets. Maybe through genetic telepathy she knew that I had emailed my father and she was trying to decide whether to bring it up or wait for me to. She always tries not to intrude. I turned my Tweetie-Pie eyes on her. Bring it up, Mom! Ask me!

My mother only stretched and went to get coffee. Drinking coffee is the one unhealthy thing she does. It is her daily pleasure. She won’t give it up, no matter how badly she sleeps.

The bare skull of the boy sitting opposite had crisscrossing tracks of metal stitches and a purple map of skin above his ear. Eyes in dark shadows. Cheeks the only babyish part of him left. Head down, he was playing on his phone while his mother flipped through a magazine. All at once the boy swung his legs, and smiled right at me.