The confrontation with her mother came to a head on a Tuesday evening, three weeks after the first rumors had reached her, patience finally worn thin by weeks of vague reassurances that had clearly stopped being enough.
"I need you to actually talk to me," her mother said, setting down the dish towel with a deliberateness that made it clear this wasn't going to be another conversation Sasha could deflect with a shrug and a change of subject. "Not eventually. Now. I've given you weeks, Sasha, and I've tried to trust that you'd tell me when you were ready, but I can't keep pretending everything's fine when it clearly isn't."
Sasha stood in the kitchen doorway, torn between the promise she'd made to Marissa and the growing, genuine distance she could feel opening up between herself and her
