“I think you did know her.” His earnest frown twisted his stiches and bruises into a tragic mask. “Glim, listen. This was not some random vision, okay? You saw this woman in memory.”

“How do you know that?”

“Has to be! You were afraid for your life, some trigger got set off, and there she was.”

“So?” I wound my arms tighter around my chest. “I still don’t see . . .”

“Don’t reject the idea before you hear it through!”

“Keep it down, will you?” After the day I’d had, last thing I needed was a public grilling.

“Okay,” he said more quietly. “Are you going to listen?”

I nodded sullenly.

“Then here it is: I think that woman was your mother.”

“My mother?” Denial swept over me like the surge. “Oh, come on.”

“The evidence is there.”

“What evidence?”

“You got a mirror? Describing that woman, you could have been describing yourself.”

“Or a dozen others, right here at Unca Joe!”

I must have shouted it. Others were looking at us. Even Rousseau glanced up. I ducked my head. He’d think we were arguing about him.

Rubio leaned toward me. “Who else would you have risked your life to save?”

“Anyone. A friend, a stranger, anyone! C’mon, you all say you helped whoever you could during Abel!”

“It didn’t have to be Abel. Maybe some earlier storm.”

My mother? Oh god. What if he was right? He so often was.

My mother had been a total blank so far. Not a scrap of her remained in my memory. But not knowing what had happened to her let me believe she was still alive, somewhere on the Mainland. I’d taken some comfort from that thought, even planning how I would go about finding her, once I remembered her name.

The tears came before I could stop them. “You’re saying my mother is . . . dead.”

“Well, yes. I am.” He’d been sure of it all along. “So’s mine.”

“And you’re saying it’s my fault! You’re saying I killed my mother!”

“What? No!” He grabbed my wrists. “I never meant that!”

“Then what did you mean?” How could he plant such horror to fester in my brain?

“Only that it happened. That you did everything you could, everything! Letting go was her decision. She knew you’d both drown if she didn’t. She gave her life to save her child.”

This was supposed to make me feel better?