Going back would mean seeing all the places where our mother loved us so much that I still remember to this day how safe and content I felt, something I have yet to feel again.

Going back would mean seeing where she left us for good because that love wasn’t enough for her. Seeing the place where I know, in the deepest, darkest sticky pit of my soul, that she killed herself.

I guzzle down some champagne, setting the glass on the mirrored table before us, and Tai’s petal-pink lip juts.

“C’mon, you know it’s bullshit that Marion is keeping us from Viloxin, Manon.”

“Are you seriously pouting?” I cross my arms and shiver, even though the bar is too warm now and sweat’s slicking my neck. Because I have a secret I haven’t told Tai.

I kind of, sort of, want an excuse to go back to Viloxin, too. Not to be the toast of the town, the cultural princess of Viloxin back on home turf, like I’m sure Tai wants to be. But to get to know Mama and our homeland again, on my own terms. Not the shiny, flat versions everyone thinks they know.

I’ll write her truest story into a book, so everyone can understand just how deep her magic ran, how we’ll never find anything like it again.

I sigh and uncross my arms. I pick up my coupe of champagne and extend it toward my sister, ready to clink.

Her face spreads into a wide, easy smile. “You’ll do it? You’ll help me convince her?”

My lips quaver into a small grin, and for the first time in years, we are smiling at each other. We clink glasses, the deal sealed.

That’s when the music shifts up-tempo and sparklers burn into the frame of my vision. Three waiters in tuxes, Dom the bouncer, and a posse of effortlessly cool people approach our corner, holding the fizzing fireworks with toothy smiles and bearing a frosted cake full of burning candles.

“What is happening?” I hiss at Tai.

But she’s already hopping onto her heels and clapping her hands, cheek-kissing everyone and anyone, by the looks of it. Even strangers are turning and breaking into grins. “I didn’t even dress,” she says, in between smooches and squeals, and I’m left alone at knee level with the cake. The hastily applied icing on it reads: A very, very special happy birthday to our favorite Foix Hammick!

Her birthday isn’t even for another two weeks.

I wonder if ulcers can instantaneously crop up and burn your stomach lining.