I waited until the hallway was empty, the eucalyptus diffuser had shut off with a mechanical sigh, and someone else was crying loud enough near the koi pond to cover the sound of my lies. I crouched by the vending machine, because emotional vulnerability pairs well with stale Chex Mix, and dialed her number from memory.

  Cass picked up on the third ring. That was strategic. The third ring is the one that says I saw it, I hesitated, but I’m not completely dead inside.

  "Who died?" she said.

  "Hi, honey," I cooed. I sounded like a guilty voicemail.

  A pause. Shifting sounds. A milk steamer, maybe. Probably at work. Probably pretending not to be.

  "Seriously, Mom. Who died?"

  "No one yet. But the day is young."

  She didn’t laugh. Or maybe she did, but she muted it. Cass has this voice now—polished ambivalence. Like she did the therapy I avoided and weaponized the results.

  "I’m calling because I thought you should know I’m… at Sunshadow."

  Another pause. This one hung longer. Not for shock. For sarcasm prep.

  "Sunshadow," she repeated. "That’s the one with the aromatherapy trauma dome, right?"

  "Technically, it’s a yurt."

  "Of course it is."

  I shifted. The vending machine hummed like it was judging me. “It’s different this time.”

  "Right," she said, flat. "Different how? Less pills, more hashtags?"

  Okay, fair.

  “No. I mean—I checked myself in. Voluntarily.”

  "You voluntarily ran out of PR strategies."

  I hate when she sounds like me. I hate when she’s right more.

  “Cass.”

  Silence again. Someone dropped a plate in the dining room down the hall. It shattered. Metaphor alert.

  “Are you safe?” she asked finally, and for one flicker of a second it felt like love.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m not high. I’m just… tired. I got tired of lying. Of pretending. Of chasing something that doesn’t even want me anymore.”

  “That sounds rehearsed.”

  “It is.”

  She snorted. “At least you admit it.”

  I sighed. Loud enough to be heard. Quiet enough to sound accidental. “I’m not doing this for the optics, Cass.”

  “You literally curated your breakdown to align with book season.”

  “That was coincidence,” I said.

  She exhaled. Not disbelief. Not belief either. Just noise.

  “I just wanted you to know I’m trying.”

  “Trying what?” she said. “To get better or to get published?”

  Both, I almost said. But that sounded petty. And honest. So I said nothing.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m glad you’re not dead. But this isn’t a redemption arc. You don’t get bonus points for texting me sober.”

  “It was a call.”

  “Wow. What do I win?”

  My throat tightened. I hated how much her disinterest still felt like discipline. Like I was a teenager again, and she was the adult in the doorway deciding if I could be trusted.

  “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “You wanted to feel like a mother again,” she corrected. “Those aren’t the same thing.”

  Oof. Ten points, Cass. Delivered with no tremble.

  “I love you,” I said. I always say it right before she hangs up. It’s a reflex. Like locking your car door in a bad neighborhood.

  She didn’t say it back.

  But she didn’t hang up either.

  She just breathed. One inhale. One exhale. It hit harder than a slap.

  Then:

  “Good luck, Frankie.”

  Not Mom. Not I love you too. Just Frankie.

  And then the click.

  I stayed crouched under the flickering light of the vending machine, forehead pressed to the cool plastic of the Sour Patch Kids button, feeling like I’d been demoted in my own narrative.

  She didn’t yell. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even sound mad.

  She just sounded… finished.

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  Which, honestly, is worse.

  By the time I stood up, my legs were stiff and my time was up. The nurse at the desk looked over with a bored kind of suspicion.

  I smiled. “Just doing some grounding,” I said, shaking the phone like it was a talisman.

  She nodded. Didn’t care.

  Back in my room, Trix was sprawled on her bed with a heating pad and a book that looked like it had been thrown at someone once.

  “Family?” she asked, not looking up.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How was the guilt trip?”

  “Luxury suite,” I muttered. “Turn-down service included.”

  "You look like a woman who just got verbally curb-stomped by someone with her mother’s eyebrows," she said without looking up.

  "Close," I muttered, dropping onto my mattress. "My daughter. Cass. She answered this time. That feels like progress."

  Trix snorted. “Yeah, nothing says ‘functional family system’ like shared voicemail trauma.”

  I laid back, stared at the ceiling like it might blink first. “She used to call me ‘mama’ in this chirpy voice, like she was trying it on for size. I loved it. I loved being needed.”

  I looked down at my hands.

  “I don’t even think I ever wanted to be a mother,” I said. “I think I just loved being needed.”

  Trix looked at me for a long time.

  "Sure you didn’t just love being wanted?" Trix asked.

  She said it like a joke. She meant it like an autopsy.

  I didn’t answer. Which meant she was right.

  I closed my eyes. “I was twenty-two. Pregnant from a man who owned three leather jackets and no furniture. I thought that was sexy. He left. I stayed. I named her Cassandra because I liked the drama of it. Mythical. Doomed to tell the truth and never be believed.”

  Trix lit a cigarette she wasn’t supposed to have and exhaled like it bored her. “That’s bleak.”

  “That’s branding.”

  We sat in silence. Not companionable. But not hostile, either. Just two women held together by walls and court orders.

  Trix picked at the hem of her jeans. “I used to think if I died, the only people who’d notice were the ones who owed me money. Or my exes who’d feel relieved enough to write a poem.”

  “I’d read that poem,” I said.

  She smiled. Almost. “I wouldn’t.”

  Another beat. Then she said, “You ever actually tell her you’re sorry? Not like, sobbing-into-a-hallmark-card sorry. But real sorry.”

  “Cass?” I paused. “I’ve written it down about a hundred times. But when I open my mouth, all that comes out is... script.”

  "Yeah," she said. "Guilt does that. Turns truth into rehearsals."

  I sat up. “What about you? You got anyone who still picks up?”

  She gave a half shrug. “Probation officer. Drug dealer I stopped sleeping with. Some girl I met at a bus stop once who texts me inspirational quotes when Mercury’s in retrograde.”

  “Family?”

  “I do,” she said. “In my head. During minor dissociative episodes. They’re very supportive there.”

  “Seriously.”

  She shrugged. “My dad’s in Arizona somewhere. Doing Reiki or crypto. Depends on the week. My mom teaches naked yoga and thinks boundaries are a colonial construct.”

  I blinked.

  “Yeah,” she said, smirking. “Thanksgiving was a trip. One year she gave everyone microdoses in the pie. I spent two hours weeping into a cornucopia and confessing to sins I hadn’t committed yet.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He wasn’t invited.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s... worse than mine.”

  She laughed. “Yeah. We all think we invented fucked up.”

  We lapsed into a silence that didn’t feel awkward, which meant we were either getting close or giving up. With us it was hard to tell. Trix always looked like she was seconds from setting something on fire or saying something that would make me want to.

  “Do you hate her?” I asked, after a beat. “Your mom.”

  “No,” she said. “I just stopped pretending she loved me the way I needed. That’s not hate. That’s clarity.”

  I stared at the ceiling like it had answers. It didn’t. Just a dead bug in the corner and a crack shaped like Florida.

  “My mother once told me I had a good face for daytime but not enough teeth for prime time.”

  “That’s poetry,” Trix said. “Dumb, abusive poetry.”

  “She also told me crying makes you puffy and men don’t marry puffy.”

  Trix winced. “My mom used to say sex is currency and I didn’t have the credit.”

  We looked at each other. Then laughed.

  “You think we’re broken?” I asked.

  “I think broken is the wrong metric,” she said. “We’re functional. We’re just not… repairable.”

  “Nice,” I muttered. “Inspirational poster shit. I should embroider that on a throw pillow. ‘Frankie Travers?: Healing is Hell, but the Lighting’s Great.’”

  She snorted. “I’d buy that. Then burn it.”

  We went quiet again. But this one felt earned.

  Then, gently, she said, “You know she’s not wrong. Cass.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “She’s angry because she remembers you in a way you can’t spin. That’s dangerous. You can’t write her into forgiveness.”

  “I tried,” I said.

  “I know.”

  Trix stood. Cracked her neck. Lit a cigarette she wasn’t supposed to have.

  She blew smoke at the ceiling. Watched it drift. Then looked at me.

  “You loved her?”

  “With everything,” I said. “Which is probably what fucked her up.”

  “Same,” she said. “Different details.”

  She handed me a cigarette.

  Then she said, “You’re not a bad mom.”

  I laughed. “I’m not a mom at all anymore.”

  “Yeah, you are,” she said. “You’re just grounded. Spiritually. Indefinitely.”

  She winked. Left the room.

  And I sat there. Then I rolled over, pulled the journal from under the pillow. Third time today. Or fourth, depending how you count the false starts.

  The page was already open to a line I’d abandoned earlier—“Healing is a marketing term with better margins.” I scratched it out. Too bitter. Too honest. Too mine.

  I flipped past it and found a clean page.

  Scene Study for the Formerly Sincere

  You start in second person because it makes the guilt easier to narrate.

  You, not I.

  You woke up, not I woke up.

  You fucked up.

  You meant well.

  You thought this would help.

  It didn’t.

  It’s a trick you learned after your second DUI and your first divorce: write it like someone else lived it and suddenly it’s storytelling, not self-incrimination. Easier to craft a scene than survive it. Easier to confess when it sounds like a script. So:

  You wake up in a twin bed with a pilled cotton blanket and a roommate who sleeps like she’s waiting for the world to end and hoping it happens before group.

  You pretend not to notice your legs are shaking.

  You pretend not to check the time every six minutes like that’ll make withdrawal go faster.

  You brush your teeth with one hand and hold the wall with the other.

  You tell yourself it’s just the detox.

  You tell yourself it’s just the room.

  You tell yourself you’ve been through worse.

  You have. But not sober.

  The journal is hidden in the bottom of your bag, under the wrap dress you thought might read as “boho chic” but now just looks like premeditated delusion.

  You open it only after the first group session.

  After Arlo tells you you don’t have to talk.

  You wait until Trix leaves for what she calls her “mandatory cult debrief.”

  Then you open the journal.

  Then you start writing.

  You don’t tell the truth, but you get close enough that it stings.

  You close the journal before you cry. You lie back on the twin bed and stare at the ceiling like it might have answers. You practice the expression you’ll use when someone asks how you’re doing. And you wait for the next line. Not of coke. Of dialogue.

  This is rehearsal.

  And you always hit your mark.