When my mother had been here, it had been so easy to stay sheltered in the cocoon she’d built around me. I’d pushed back in all the ways that restless youth do, but I always surrendered in the end and accepted my curated existence. She’d kept so many secrets. From all of us, but especially from me. Her daughter, her firstborn. If anyone should have known the truth, shouldn’t it have been me? Before Teller, before even Father, it had been the two of us, alone in the world. An unwed mother and her bastard infant. A part of me hated her for it, even though I knew she had done it for me. I knew in
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