ARIA POV
Cunningly, she allowed her words to be heard, in her loving calm and with urgency. "I'm coming, Aria," she said, with her steps so deliberate, like someone shy about drawing attention to herself, although her body language betrayed the underlying tension, coiling into the kind of tension you could clearly read in her posture. I saw her passing very slowly and deliberately toward her room, and yet, she looked strangely tense and unsettled.
But I knew my mother as someone who knew very much the others' habits and quirks. I always knew that she was definitely up to something; something was going on underneath, just like someone burying the secrets behind an innocent face. So, it was only after my mother went into her room that I made a cat-footed dash to the door and tiptoed there,
