“I didn’t know!”
Her voice rose.
“I didn’t know if I thought that because you’re my mom. So I kept looking.”
“Kept looking?”
Zoe nodded.
“For months.”
My heart sank.
She’d come into this basement and opened that box again and again.
While I cooked dinner upstairs.
While I asked how school was and accepted “fine.”
While I congratulated myself for giving my teenager space.
My daughter had been comparing her 16-year-old face to photographs of mine, trying to determine what would happen to her.
Then other things started rearranging themselves in my memory.
Zoe deleting pictures I’d taken of her.
Refusing school photos because her smile looked “weird.”
Asking me once whether I’d ever considered Botox.
I’d laughed and asked if TikTok was melting her brain.
She hadn’t laughed back.
I’d noticed every clue.
I’d just given every one of them the wrong explanation.
“Why the fillers?”
“Miranda gets them.”
Mark closed his eyes.
Zoe touched her swollen lip.
“I asked her about it.”
“What did she say?”
“That there was nothing wrong with fixing something if it made you more confident.”
“And she gave you the money?”
“Yes.”
“Did she take you?”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“She said Dad would freak out if he knew.”
