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I probably sounded frustrated when I yelled back at her, and I was. That came from worry because it had been too long since we’d spoken. “Mom, why is this connection so bad? Where are you? Tell me right now!”

“I’m in Mexico! Isn’t that exciting? You know that I could never travel down here before.”

That was because of me and my lack of a passport. Like a driver’s license, those required a permanent address and a lot of properly completed forms, with extras for someone who was a minor but didn’t know who her father was. I had gotten a passport on my own when I turned eighteen and now I could also go to Mexico.

“What are you doing there?” I asked.

The answer was two-fold: one, she was trying to start a paper flower-making business and two, she was interested in saving all the stray dogs.

One, I felt like the people of Mexico were doing great at making paper flowers without her help. And two, there were plenty of stray dogs in the United States, so why did she need to go to another country?

“You know how I like to spread my wings,” she told me. “It’s so beautiful here. I’ve met the nicest group of people.”

I was sure that she had, because she always did. It seemed that fake friends weren’t limited to the fifty states. She told me all about them, including an interesting man who wanted to be more than her friend. There had always been plenty of those guys due to how pretty she was, so petite and what she liked to say was “ethereal.” That quality was enhanced by how she moved, kind of dancing as she walked instead of plodding, and how she was always talking about magical, mystical things. “In another life, I was probably a fairy,” she had liked to say.

But now she was talking about the new guy, Maël. “He’s so manly,” she told me. “He would be able to take care of me.”

That didn’t sound mystical and it didn’t sound like my mom. “Why do you need someone to take care of you?” I asked loudly. “You can take care of yourself. You always have.”

“Hekate, sometimes a woman wants a little tenderness and affection. It’s been a long time since Daisuke went away.”

She meant that it had been a long time since Daisuke got sent up the river due to being a criminal.

“I understand the desire to have a boyfriend,” I said.

“You do?”

She had sounded shocked and I got miffed. Very.

“Yes, I do!” I answered but she was telling me more about Maël.

He was “a little younger” and “so, so handsome” and again, she talked about his caretaking capabilities.

“Is everything ok? Are you seeing him because you feel lonely for Daisuke, or is there something else going on?” I questioned.

The connection sounded crackly. “What?” she asked. “I better go. We have an order of tissue paper coming in and delivery drivers always struggle to find this address.”

“Where are you?” I asked. “Specifically?”

She had already hung up or maybe the call had been dropped. I took another few moments to yell her name and then try to reconnect but there was no answer. I had plans, anyway—I hadn’t expected my mom to pick up in the first place and have a conversation with me, so now I had to hurry. I went quickly to the bathroom, pausing only to look unhappily at the water swirling around the toilet bowl before I rushed downstairs. I did stop when I heard Vera call my name.

“Where are you running off to? Let me see what you’re wearing.” She walked over and made me spin to display my outfit. “This is cute but you need a higher heel because you’re so squat.”

“I’m not squat, I’m short,” I corrected. “So are you.”

“Which is why I wear a nice heel when I’m heading out. Where are you going?”

“I’m meeting Gramps Marchand to run some errands so I don’t forget how to drive,” I said. He had expressed a lot of concern that I would fall into poor, unfocused habits if I didn’t get in some practice, and he had also expressed a fear that I was sitting alone in my apartment all day with no contact with other mortals. And that was kind of true. Carmen had flown down to Florida to spend a few months in the sunshine and Oliver was gone for good.

He had already moved into his new house because real estate transactions went quickly when you paid in cash. It was also easier when you didn’t have much stuff—he had more than I did, but as he’d said, some of it wasn’t even unpacked from his previous move from California. So it had taken only one truck and a few hours to ferry all his possessions from the Milaflores Building to the Tudor house on the West Side.

“You call him ‘Gramps,’” Vera snorted. “I bet he likes that a lot.”

“I don’t think he minds. It’s easier than calling him ‘Oliver’ since there’s also another Oliver.”

“He goes by ‘Ollie’ anyway,” she told me.

“You sound like you know him pretty well.”