Maureen could have run away, but she hadn’t. She wouldn’t have, not without telling me and Brenda. I wanted to believe that, to hang on to that thought, and so I fought back the doubts whispering that there was so much Maureen and Brenda had been hiding from me, and if I pushed too hard, if I dug too deep, I’d discover that what was really happening was that they’d grown up without me. That was a secret I didn’t want to learn.
