Chapter 69

SIENNA

I stayed at my mother’s for another hour.

We didn’t talk much—not about Gideon, not about the cold war brewing between us, not about the words we’d both swallowed weeks ago. We just were. She made tea the way she always had—loose leaves, no sugar. I helped her fold laundry, soft and worn from years of use. We sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch in that tiny apartment, and for a brief, bor