But then it becomes clear. I’m looking at me. But it’s my mother’s eyes that are staring back at me. I know them from my hidden photograph, even if I can’t remember them from real life.

Her eyes.

Bigger and wilder and a slightly darker shade of green than my own. Flecked with bits of gold.

I stare at those eyes for a few seconds before my reflection begins to change. The subtle differences ripple across the mirror like someone running their hand across the surface of a still pond.

First the nose.

Then the chin.

And the lips.

It only takes a few seconds for me to disappear. And then my mother is looking back at me from inside the rectangle-shaped prison of the bathroom mirror.

I reach for the faucet with shaking hands and turn on the cold water. I lean down and splash my face, then feel for a paper towel to dry it with. And when I look up again, my mother is gone. Of course.

Because she was never there to begin with.

It’s only me.

It’s always only been me.

I head back downstairs, and Glory looks up from her desk. “There you are,” she says with a smile. “I was starting to worry you’d gotten lost.” Then her expression changes. “Avril? Are you okay?” Her eyes are worried, and she lowers her voice to a whisper. “Did Brody—”

The screen door bangs open, and Lex and Val tumble in, laughing together. They’re both sweaty and grimy from working with the grounds crew all afternoon.

“Oh my God,” Val says. “I have never been so ready for dinner in my life.”

Lex gives me a big grin. “We’ve been planting flowers. In the dirt!” He laughs and holds up his earth-streaked hands. “George showed us how to do it.”

Val rolls her eyes. “Don’t lie,” she teases. Then she turns to Glory and me. “I did all the digging. Mr. Useless here just handed me the flowers.” She grabs Lex by the arm and pulls him down the hallway. “Come on,” she says. “I’m starving.”

He cranes his neck to look back at me. “Coming, Av?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be right there.”

“I guess I lost track of time,” Glory tells me. “I didn’t realize it was five o’clock already.”

“Me, either,” I say.

The fear I felt when I saw that photo in Brody’s office is finally sliding off my back, the way water does after a swim. And that memory of hiding under the picnic table on the sea porch doesn’t seem any more real now than what I saw in the bathroom mirror. Or the whispering I heard last night.

I’m embarrassed for letting my imagination get the best of me. I’ve been looking so hard for my mother that I’m seeing her ghost around every corner.