It had been a while since I’d spent the day with my mom.
Not because I didn’t want to but because everything that had happened lately made it hard to breathe, let alone go shopping for things that didn’t feel essential.
But she insisted.
“You need to get out of that house, Lyra,” she’d said over the phone that morning. “You need to see sunlight, be around people, touch fabric with your fingers again. Come on—we used to love this.”
So I let her drag me to the boutique street near the edge of the city. The one with overpriced window displays and way too many florals, but also really good coffee.
She was already waiting when I got there, standing outside a shop in big sunglasses and a wide smile, radiating that kind of post-trauma optimism only she could muster after all the hell we’d be
