“I think you knew my mother.”
***
I pressed play.
I was on the grass before the video was thirty seconds old.
The woman on the screen had gray at her temples and lines around her eyes, and I knew her immediately. I knew her the way I know the photograph in my drawer, except this was worse; this was her moving, her hands gesturing the way they always had, her voice in my ears after thirty years of complete silence.
Lily.
She was alive.
She had been alive.
She was alive.
***
She looked directly into the camera.
“Shawn,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to say this for thirty years and I’ve written it so many times and I never found a way to make it not devastating, so I’m just going to say it.” She stopped. “I didn’t fall into the river. I walked away.”
I paused the video.
