She waits, watching us calmly before nodding her head. The reply from the cameraman is inaudible; it’s just us and her, us and her, us and her.

“I just can’t wait to get home to Stökéwood and my little girls,” she adds, and my throat catches as she smooths the scarf off her head with a grin.

Her eyes, blue like shattered ice, are so happy and bright they pierce my heart.

When the video ends, Tai charges out of the institute and into the private parking entrance in her formal wear, trailing a wet bloodred train. Uncle Teddy—vibrating with fury—rages on the speakerphone with an apologetic, slightly tipsy rep who explains that “wires had been crossed” and the magazine thought approval to show the video had been received. “It’s a special moment for her fans, to get another intimate glimpse of Mireille,” the rep adds, as if that unearned, false intimacy would soothe and warm the hearts of her family.

I look at Tai with eyes that feel raw and bloodshot. Her makeup has smeared into a grotesque mask; her swollen, teary face stares back, jaw set.

But I can’t manage to feel angry.

Sure, I hate the magazine for springing this on us.

I hate the retrospective itself, this tribute to the false, polished Mama, a woman—I am able to admit—lived with, loved, and experienced most on a screen, if hours are what count.

I hate, most of all, that I don’t know her. Who is Lady Fleischman? Who is this woman blown up to ten times her size on screen?

But the truth is, after seeing the video, I’m …

Buoyant. Floating on air. To see Mama on that last day, not distant, haunted, or preoccupied, but instead so visibly thrilled to return home to us, pulsing with life on a Viloki street I recognized …

Maybe she didn’t leave us because she wanted to leave us.

Maybe the darkness keeping her from us is falling away, shadow by shadow.

Maybe we’re meant to find her.

To solve her mystery and draw her into the light.

BOY

THE VILOKI SUN—

MAY 25, 2019