cheek and closed her eyes.
I lowered her back to her pillow. She smiled
again and reached up to take my hand.
"I've made myself a bit tired. just rest, but wake
me when your father comes home. I want to celebrate
your engagement to Samuel with him," she said. Her
hand softened and fell back to the bed like a small
sparrow losing the power of flight.
I fixed her blanket so she was comfortable and
then stood there looking down at her. She seemed to
diminish right before my eyes, shrink into a little girl.
I left her sleeping, her mind surely filled with
lollipops and candy canes.
I didn't remember walking across the hallway to
my room. It was as if I had drifted on a black cloud.
Suddenly, I stood before my vanity mirror and looked
at my face, laughing at myself now for the
resemblances I had once imagined I had to my father.
Lies and deceptions were truly brothers born from the
same desperate need to survive in a world filled with
entrapments, most of which we created for ourselves
out of our own lusts and fantasies. What a fool you've
been, Olivia Gordon. The lesson was clear. Survival
was more important than honesty.
Honesty was perhaps the greatest luxury of all,
and those who could afford it, who could house it and wear it and walk with it were the really blessed people in this place we called our home. They were never
afraid to speak, to be heard.
The rest of us? The rest of us had nothing but
muted voices.
9