We both wanted the Mom we remembered, so Nin and I agreed to leave those folders unopened. Still, I couldn’t believe Nin wouldn’t at least skim the journals, but I stopped myself from saying anything. I let her tell me about her dating life instead, and I told her about Theo and the kids, and though I wanted to ask her to send me all of Mom’s journals, I didn’t. There was no point in taking a second chance of losing them in the mail, I’d pick them up when we visited Dad for Christmas.

“Have you been accessing Mom?” I asked.

“No,” Nin said. “I keep her logged out when I visit Dad. It’s weird to watch him just talking to himself, but I’m not comfortable seeing her hologram.”

I knew what she meant. Being with Mom, even for those couple of days, had sealed my grief somewhere deep inside. I could feel the tears wanting to come, but my throat wouldn’t let them out. One day Mom had been alive, the next she was gone, and then she was back as a hologram, her whole life sorted for us in online folders.

That night, after Theo was snoring, I lay awake wondering what Dad had meant. Mom was funny? Better than before? And what about the fact that there was a folder specifically labeled Italian Men? It was two in the morning when I got out of bed, pulled on sweatpants and my jacket, and slid open the patio door.

The Flatirons rose high behind our house, capped with snow that glowed silver in the moonlight, the stars shimmering above them. I rolled my eyes to the right and blinked open Nostalgia. Then I went to my user profile of Mom, accessed the folders, and checkmarked them all. Are you sure you want to enable Full Access? My breath emerged in small white clouds. Yes, I wanted to know who my mother really was. So I blinked and brought Mom back to life for the first time since I’d come home.

“Hey, hon,” she said. In the evening light her hologram looked as real as flesh. “It’s late. What’s wrong?”

“I was just thinking about you.”

“I know you better than that. What’s the matter?”

“Well…” I said, trying to find the right words. “I just want to know some things about you. Stories from your life you never told me, like who you were before you had us.”

“Ha!” she laughed. “That’s the first time you’ve ever wanted to hear about that.” Her hologram passed through the back of the deck chair and sat down in it. She crossed one leg over the other, looking more relaxed than I’d ever seen her, and dug around in her jacket. Then she brought out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, shook a cigarette free and lit it.

“Mom, you smoke?”