Ayanna’s father had said nothing. He had gone, sat in the back, accepted a few condolences, and called Ayanna that night to tell her to give her mother some more patience. They were hurting, but she was hurting. Ayanna didn’t have the energy to keep fighting. “Sure, Dad,” she said. In the following silence, his breaths were even. In the next room, her grandma was playing some violent multiplayer game. She had read video games helped the brain rewire itself after trauma. Ayanna’s father breathed and her grandmother shot and shot and shot.

Sometimes, she was able to even feel a little sorry for her mom. Ayanna knew Opal’s faith was real; her mother truly believed in God and heaven and angels. There was a story she often told of hearing a voice on the way to work saying “Opal, Opal, go this way.” So she didn’t follow her usual route to work for once and avoided a ten-car pileup. That was enough for her to have firm proof angels were real and they were looking out for her. She always told Ayanna and Olivia to listen for the small voice of God because he was always watching and looking out for them. It had taken all Ayanna’s willpower not to mention the roadwork and slowdowns also happening on the usual route, the first time she’d heard that story. Her mother wanted to be special in God’s eyes, and who was Ayanna to try to take that from her? But the thought was also annoying because it felt indicative of their relationship, Ayanna doing and thinking about ways to make her mother not just love her but like her, and her mother too self-absorbed to think about her as a person worth seeing. In these moments, when she was optimistic, Ayanna wondered if she had ruined everything by picking her father and considered apologizing. When she was feeling realistic, she knew apologizing might embarrass her mother and make the situation between them worse.

Oftentimes, though, Ayanna thought about how her mother had lied about what happened to Olivia. She claimed the girls had gone to a state park together to swim and hike. Ayanna had napped by the lake, and when she woke up Olivia was gone. Even worse to Ayanna, there had been a police search. No one could find Olivia—of course—but they did find the remains of another girl no one had reported missing.

She did not understand why her mother had concocted such an elaborate lie. She didn’t want to consider why her father had agreed this was the right idea. She did not understand how her mother had gotten away with it. She didn’t understand how everyone who had questioned Ayanna had believed her.