left uncorrected becomes scripture by Christmas.
My mother never had to lie.
She simply declined to provide the truth, cried at the right moments, and allowed two hundred well-meaning people to write the rest.
In the only court that mattered to her—the one meeting every Sunday—her grief became evidence.
The absent daughter was tried without ever being called.
I knew none of this then.
I was seven hours south, watching my ankles swell and counting down toward delivery.
Danny told me the details years later at my own kitchen table,
