adults assume words are sailing over their heads.
Somewhere in her little mind, she had noticed a blank space.
I lay there in the dark and didn’t answer.
The silence sounded enormous.
And suddenly I understood.
If I stayed silent, the silence wouldn’t remain mine.
My mother would fill it exactly as she had filled the previous four years.
Someday Marin might sit in another kitchen hearing that her mother had disappeared.
Had hidden.
Had been too ashamed to face decent people.
Silence had protected me.
Now it would become
