Olivia
It had been two days since I had learned the truth about Clarissa, also known as Giselle—my mother. For those two days, I had felt as if it were all nothing but a dream.
But it wasn’t. It was real.
It was a sunny afternoon, and she was visiting again, just as she had done every day since the news had been broken. I had tried telling her stories from our shared past, but it just wasn’t enough. Nothing jogged her memory, although she enjoyed the stories.
As I watched her now, playing with the twins in their playpen, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sadness wash over me. There was such a tender, loving look in her eyes—one that I recognized from my own childhood memories of her.
And yet, at the same time, her gaze held a kind of wistful longing, as though she co
