The drive across town the next morning was suffocatingly quiet.
Outside, the late December sky hung low and slate-gray over the suburban cul-de-sacs, threatening a second wave of freezing rain. The streetlights had barely flickered off, and the neighborhood lawns were dotted with inflatable Santas and glittering reindeer that looked absurdly cheerful against the frost. Inside our SUV, nobody touched the radio.
In the backseat, Zaya sat perfectly straight. She was wearing her favorite navy-blue wool coat, her hands folded neatly over the small red velvet box sitting on her lap. Her curls were pulled back into two tidy braids I had woven with trembling fingers an hour earlier. She looked so small against the wide leather seat, yet there was an eerie stillness about her that chilled me more than the winter air outside.
I glanced into the rearview mirror. “Zaya, baby. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can turn around right now. We can stay home, make waffles, watch movies in our pajamas.”
Zaya looked up, her dark eyes steady. “No, Mama. Dad said when people keep pretending you’re invisible, you have to turn on the light so they have to look at you.”
My throat tightened. I turned my head toward Travis. He was gripping the steering wheel at ten and two, his knuckles pale beneath the gray light.
“Travis,” I whispered under my breath so Zaya wouldn’t hear. “What is in that box? Tell me before we walk through that front door.”
Travis didn’t flinch. His eyes remained locked on the icy asphalt. “The truth, Nora. The only thing my mother has spent thirty-five years running away from.”
“That doesn’t answer my question!” My voice broke slightly. “If this blows up, Zaya is the one standing at ground zero. Your family will eat her alive. You know how Sylvia and Greg are. You know how Lorraine operates. She will turn this around and make herself the martyr, and Zaya will be the scapegoat.”
Travis signaled right onto Elmwood Terrace—the immaculate, tree-lined avenue where Lorraine lived in her sprawling stone-and-brick colonial.
“She won’t,” Travis said, his voice deadly quiet. “Because for the first time in her life, Lorraine isn’t going to have an audience she can manipulate. She’s going to have a mirror.”
We pulled into the driveway. It was barely nine in the morning, but the driveway was already packed with cars. Sylvia’s luxury crossover, Greg’s pristine pickup truck, and two rental sedans belonging to cousins who had flown in from Ohio. Every Boxing Day was the same: Lorraine hosted an elaborate buffet breakfast of eggs Benedict, country ham, and mimosas to show off her pristine home and hold court for round two of holiday worship.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Travis, please.”
He put the truck in park, turned off the ignition, and unbuckled his seatbelt. Then he turned around to face the backseat. He didn’t look angry; he looked grounded, like an oak tree that had weathered fifty storms and decided it wasn’t swaying in the wind anymore.
“Zaya,” he said gently, reaching out a broad hand.
She took it without hesitation. Her tiny fingers curled around his thumb.
“Remember what we talked about?” Travis asked.
She nodded. “I don’t say mean words. I don’t yell. I just give it to her, and I stand my ground.”
“And what happens if she gets mad?”
“I don’t apologize,” Zaya recited, her chin lifting a fraction of an inch. “Because the truth doesn’t need an apology.”
A cold sweat broke out across my neck. My husband had spent months preparing our seven-year-old daughter for an execution, and I hadn’t even known the scaffold was being built.
We walked up the cobblestone path. The heavy oak front door was adorned with a massive fir wreath tied with a burgundy silk ribbon. Before Travis could even reach for the polished brass knocker, the door swung open.
Sylvia stood there in a cashmere wrap, a glass of champagne in hand. Sylvia was Travis’s older sister, the golden daughter who inherited Lorraine’s razor-thin smile and uncanny ability to deliver an insult wrapped in three layers of sugar.
“Well, look who decided to join the living!” Sylvia trilled, leaning down to air-kiss Travis’s cheek, then barely acknowledging me with a nod. She looked down at Zaya, her eyes flicking over the girl’s plain coat. “Maddie and Jonah are already in the sunroom, sweetie. You can go watch them play with Maddie’s new virtual reality set. Be careful around it, though—it was very expensive.”
Zaya didn’t move. She didn’t look at Sylvia’s manicured hands or the shiny jewelry dangling from her wrists.
