Chapter 4

"Mom's gone, Nora."

Emma said it fast, the way you tear a stitch so it won't pull.

"Eight months. Eight months after they took you. Her heart. It was quick, they said. Quick."

The champagne towers kept sparkling. The orchids kept smelling like a funeral pretending to be a wedding. And the floor stayed exactly where it was, which felt like a lie, because everything else had just dropped out from under me.

Eight months.

I did the math before I could stop myself. For twenty-eight of the thirty-six months I'd been inside, I had been writing to a dead…