"You're not crazy," Evelyn said. "He did. He stole your right to decide. That doesn't mean the thing he stole it for is poison. Those can both be true at the same time, and that's the part that'll keep you up."
Aaliyah laughed, and it came out wet. "I hate when you're wise."
"I hate when I'm right. Comes with the same territory." Evelyn's chair creaked. "Your mother wrote me last Christmas. Said she was sick. Said she wasn't asking for you. Said she just wanted somebody in the family to know in case."
Aaliyah's fingers tightened on the phone. "Sick how?"
"She didn't specify. You know Ruth. Drama when it suits her, silence when it doesn't. I asked. She said she'd tell you herself if you ever let her." Evelyn sighed. "I didn't push. Maybe I should have."
After they hung up, Aaliyah sat on the laundry room floor until her legs went numb and the Oregon night pressed black against the windows. Then she stood, hung the cardigan on a hanger in the front closet where she would have to see it every time she reached for her coat, and went to bed in a house that suddenly felt too large for one woman and one sleeping child.
The next three days passed in a kind of domestic siege.