Mark was waiting on the porch, his face pale.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have…”
“Take me upstairs,” I said.
He unlocked the guest room.
My mother looked back at me from the wall.
Her eyes were exactly as I remembered them when she stood at the kitchen window, and above her stretched a ceiling filled with half-finished silver stars.
I lowered myself to the floor and finally cried the way I had refused to cry for three months.
Mark knelt beside me.
“I didn’t know how to reach you,” he said. “You went so quiet.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I went quiet from myself too.”
Leo climbed onto the bed and dipped his brush into a small jar of silver paint.
“Mommy,” he said. “Come finish the last one with me.”
