My mother went to bed at midnight.
She'd held herself through the entire kitchen conversation with the composure I recognised from my whole childhood, the composure that didn't mean she was fine, that meant she'd decided to be functional and process the rest privately, later in the dark, and when she finally stood and said goodnight her voice was steady and her eyes were not, and I walked her to her room and stood in the doorway while she sat on the edge of the bed.
"Are you all right," I said.
"No," she said. "But I will be." She looked at her hands. "She was sitting at my kitchen table. A woman who was dead."
"I know."
"In a house full of twins and brothers and fathers and plans." She looked up at me with an exhaustion that went all the way down. "Is there anything else, Sera. Is th
