The sitting room felt smaller than Zara remembered or perhaps it was simply full in a way it hadn’t been before, crowded with everything that had gone unsaid for over a year.
She came back downstairs after settling Lilly, her eyes still swollen, her face carrying the particular quiet of someone who has cried themselves past the point of noise. She sat. The others her mother, Victor, Maya kept stealing glances at her, each look a little uncertain, a little searching. She had changed. They could feel it without yet being able to name it.
Her mother broke first.
“I’m so sorry, my girl.” Mrs. Ashford’s voice was soft but unsteady at its edges. “For what happened to her. For what happened to you. After the accident they pronounced you dead. We had no choice but to let people believe it.
