Mom had kept every one.

He hadn’t learned anything by going through the boxes, but for a moment, Mateo thought it didn’t matter. Being surrounded by Mom’s stuff had been comforting rather than painful—a reminder that her life hadn’t been all bad. Most of it had been great. How long had it been since Mateo let himself remember the good times instead of the awful end?

Just as he started repacking the final box, though, a card fell to the floor.

Mateo stooped to pick it up. It was in a lilac-colored envelope, and at first he assumed it must have been a Mother’s Day card he’d sent her. But then he saw his mother’s handwriting on the envelope: just one word, a name. Elizabeth.

Slowly he opened the envelope. Inside, a brightly colored card with glitter around the letters read FOR A VERY SPECIAL GIRL! Mateo read the inscription in Mom’s cursive:

I’m so glad we’ve become friends this year. Nothing has ever made me so proud as the day that you said I was like a mom to you. Well, you’re like a daughter to me! I hope we’ll always be this close.—Lauren

The date was only two weeks before her suicide. Maybe she never got around to sending the card. Maybe she forgot about it, because Elizabeth had wanted her to forget.

She hadn’t just made Mom crazy. She’d made Mom love her. Some of the love that should have been Mateo’s had been stolen away by a girl who was “like a daughter.”

Mateo looked down at his pile of pictures that he had colored for Mom long ago. None of them had made his mother as proud as the illusion of something Elizabeth was supposed to have said.

They were friends. At least, Mom had thought they were friends—the same way he had. Elizabeth must have been hanging around the house all the time when he was little, but Mateo and his dad didn’t remember a bit of it … because Elizabeth wouldn’t let them.

Damn her. Damn her.

Stuffing everything back in the box, Mateo prepared to confront Elizabeth at last.

He tore out of the house, got on his bike, and sped toward Elizabeth’s neighborhood. It was a gloomy day—the sky dark and low with rain that wouldn’t quite fall. Mateo felt as though night had been draped over the daytime to blot out the sun.

Elizabeth’s house stood out in the darkness. He could see magic now, and wondered how he hadn’t seen this before. How could anybody not see that this house was deeply, sickeningly wrong? It glowed—no, flickered—it was like firelight, in a way, but not comforting or warm. Instead it looked … the way fever felt. Hot and sickly and inescapable.

The words Mateo wanted to say kept bubbling up inside him, but they changed from moment to moment, contradicting one another over and over:

You killed my mother. You ruined my life.

I thought you were my friend. Make me understand.