Damn. He’d watched two separate groups be rude to her in a single day, in a single hour. “What happened with Chloe’s friend, her mom—”

“It’s no big deal. Happens all the time.”

Max frowned. But it shouldn’t….

Vera stared at her toes spread wide in her flip-flops. They were painted pink, which made Max pause. He didn’t know the girl who chose pink nail polish, and for the first time he realized that maybe he wanted to, in a way that stretched beyond what was happening with his mother.

“Vera, I’m really sorry.”

She shrugged, maintaining her tough facade. She opened her lips to say something, when a creak echoed from the hallway. Their eyes shot toward the noise. Max’s ranch house featured three bedrooms down a hall right off of the living space. His mother’s room was at the far end, the last one.

He knew the sound of her door opening as well as he knew his ringtone. Lately, it was what woke him up most nights.

He looked at Vera. “It’s her.”

She nodded and they both stood, then she waved for him to lead the way. This was what she came for.

Max stepped in front, right arm outstretched like a protective crossing guard as they inched silently into the long hallway, sidestepping the floorboards he knew always groaned. His grandmother’s pendulum clock ticked on the wall behind them, the sound oddly deafening. A fly buzzed past, skimming his nose. Then his mother slid out of her room in the same alabaster nightgown, lace hem ruffling by her ankles. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d bathed, yet her tight black curls flowed down her back in perfect ringlets and her tan skin gleamed like she’d spent the day at the beach. She looked healthy and beautiful, and Max feared Vera would think he exaggerated his stories. Then he noticed his mom’s eyes. They were open too wide, not rolled back this time; instead, all the chocolatey warmth was replaced by charcoal bricks.

Max stopped, he and Vera hovering beside a pair of never-lit candle wall sconces so thick with dust he could smell it. He felt Vera’s breath on his shoulder as they watched his mother glide dreamily, her gaze pointed in their direction, but she showed no signs of awareness. Instead, she peered with pupils dilated more than should be possible. She lifted a graceful arm toward her daughter’s door and pushed down on the handle. It opened with the drag of wood against carpet.

Max turned to Vera, looking for instruction, but her cheeks were bleached and her mouth hung open. He inched to the doorway. Vera followed. His mother stood in the rainbow glow of a Hello Kitty night-light, swaying with limbs flowing, hair swishing, and her head awkwardly bent like a severed branch. She was watching Chloe sleep.

His sister rolled over, sighing in dreamland.

Max shifted to his toes, flexing his muscles all the way to his clenched fists. He craned his neck to whisper to Vera, but a sudden stench of lilies gripped him by the throat.