“I’m so glad my girls are here,” Nathalie murmured. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”

“We’re glad to see you, too,” Gemma said, once she’d pulled herself free from Nathalie’s hug. “But we were here just last week.”

“Were you really?” Nathalie narrowed her eyes and looked over the girls, as if she didn’t quite believe them.

“Yes, we visit you every Saturday,” Harper reminded her.

Nathalie’s brow furrowed in confusion, and Harper held her breath, wondering if she’d done the right thing by correcting her mom. When she was confused or frustrated, Nathalie’s temper had a tendency to get the best of her.

“You look really nice today,” Gemma said, rushing to change the subject.

“Do I?” Nathalie looked down at her Justin Bieber T-shirt and smiled. “I do love Justin.”

While Harper had taken more after their father, Gemma had gotten her looks from Nathalie. She was slender and beautiful, looking more like a model than a mother. She kept her brown hair long, covering the scars etched on her scalp from the accident. A few locks had been put in narrow braids, and a strand in her bangs had been strung with hot pink beads.

“You both look so good!” Nathalie admired her daughters and touched Gemma’s bare arm. “You’re so tan! How do you get so tan?”

“I spend a lot of time in the water,” Gemma said.

“Right, right, right.” Nathalie closed her eyes and rubbed her temple. “You’re a swimmer.”

“I am.” Gemma smiled and nodded, proud of her mother for remembering something she’d told her a thousand times before.

“Well, come in!” Nathalie erased the pained expression from her face and gestured toward the house. “I told them you were coming today, so they let me make cookies! We should eat them while they’re still warm.”

She looped her arm around Gemma’s shoulders, walking with her into the house. The staff greeted them, and by now they knew more about Gemma’s and Harper’s lives than Nathalie did.

Not that Nathalie didn’t try to learn about her daughters. She just couldn’t remember.

Nathalie claimed she’d made the cookies, but the Chips Ahoy! wrapper sat right next to the plate that she’d dumped them on. She did that a lot, for reasons Harper didn’t completely understand. Nathalie would lie about little things, making claims that Harper and Gemma knew weren’t true.

At first they’d called her on it. Harper would calmly explain why they knew it wasn’t true, but Nathalie would get irate when caught in a lie. She’d once thrown a glass at Gemma. It missed her but had shattered against the wall and cut Gemma’s ankle.

So now they simply smiled and ate the cookies when Nathalie talked about how she’d made them. She grabbed the plate of cookies and led the girls back to her bedroom.

“It’s so much better in here,” Nathalie said, shutting the door behind them. “Without people watching over us.”

Nathalie sat back on her narrow twin bed, and Gemma sat next to her. Harper stayed standing, never feeling quite comfortable in her mother’s room.