Archie
Fiona gave me her mother's address a few days after our conversation in the botanical garden, hesitant at first, though she eventually agreed it was something I needed to do properly, on my own, without her standing beside me to soften whatever awkwardness might exist between myself and the woman whose identity had been borrowed, however necessarily, for nearly a year.
I stood outside the modest apartment building for a long moment before finally working up the nerve to climb the stairs, uncertain exactly how this meeting was supposed to unfold, given how strange the entire situation actually was. I had spent months talking to a woman I believed was Thea, sharing my deepest frustrations and quietest vulnerabilities with someone who, in the most literal sense, had never actually ex
