“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“In that last year,” she says, “you seem to drop out of the magazine, and the next time anyone hears from you, you’re out of the industry altogether. What happened?”

I can tell this is her big question—the one she’s been saving for the end. I picture her with colleagues: “Once I have her comfortable, I’m going to find out why Whitney Chase stopped writing.”

The truth amasses on my tongue.

I say, “Personal reasons.”

2.

As soon as Mom opened the door, I knew she’d had an attack. She was using the quad cane and there were purple pockets stuffed beneath her eyes. She saw me notice too, because after leaning into a brief hug, she quickly turned and shuffled down the hall.

I’d landed in Los Angeles in late afternoon, and almost felt like a tourist as I crawled down the freeway in a rented Toyota Highlander, then edged Elysian Park on my way to Los Feliz. It was so different from my New York world, where everything was fronted hard by brick and glass, I sometimes couldn’t believe I’d grown up here. When I parked, I saw the succulents reaching for the street, and pink flowers, like weeds, overgrowing the neighbor’s fence.

In fact, things were getting more luscious, more ornamental, as Los Feliz attracted wealthier residents. Many of our neighbors’ homes had been renovated, their grounds upturned and replanted, mismatching my memories. But my old house was still shabby, the lawn a scorched brown square. That wasn’t because of her MS, that’s just how Mom kept things.

I’d stay here for the night before driving up to Mimico for my interview with Pavel Firea, the trial subject. Before leaving New York, I’d called him, and he said he’d be happy to speak with me.

“You understand,” he said in an accent I couldn’t place, “I owe my life to the trial. A little interview is the least I can do.”

“I like this,” Mom said, and touched my shortened hair, “but my god, what happened to your face?”

I told her about the shooting in Arcade, and my concussion.

“You had a concussion?”

“It was minor. I had a good doctor.”

“Your brain is your livelihood, Whitney.” After inspecting the wounds and satisfying herself that I was healing, she said, “Colorado is just crazy. Is that your only bag? I made up the bed in the guest room.”

I teased her that it was still my room, but she replied, factually, “All your things are in the basement now.”

“I know.”

Around the age of forty, Mom was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and even after all this time, it hurt that she didn’t keep me apprised of her attacks. When I was on the brink of moving to New York, I remember offering to come back to Los Angeles instead. There’s no cure for MS—it only gets worse—and I thought I should be near her. But she wouldn’t hear of it. The way she spoke of Los Angeles, you’d think it was some fringe outpost where I’d never find work in media.