3

Fiona By the end of my first week, I understood something I hadn't expected. Pretending to be my mother wasn't about the uniform. It wasn't even about the wig Margaret had found for me, one that matched my mother's graying dark hair close enough to pass under the dim hallway lights. The hardest part was smaller than that. It was everything underneath. My mother walked with a certain rhythm, quick and light on her feet despite years of hard work, like she was always half a step ahead of whatever task came next. I walked slower. Heavier. I noticed it the first morning when I carried a tray down the east hallway and one of the older maids, a woman named Ruth who had worked in this house almost as long as my mother, glanced at me twice. "You're walking odd today, Thea," she said. "Your hip bothering you again?" I froze for half a second too long before I answered. "A little. I think I slept wrong." Ruth nodded and kept moving, but I felt my heart slamming against my ribs the whole way down the hall. It was such a small thing. A walk. Something I had never thought about before in my life, and now it was the difference between staying hidden and being exposed. That night, I stood in my mother's room and tried to walk the way she did, back and forth across the small space between her bed and the window, forcing my steps to be lighter, quicker, more like hers and less like mine. I felt ridiculous. I felt like a child playing dress up in someone else's life. The voice was harder still. My mother had a particular way of speaking to the staff, soft but clipped, always polite, never wasting a single word. I tended to ramble when I was nervous, and in that house, I was nervous almost constantly. More than once I caught myself starting a sentence the way I would normally speak, quick and casual, before catching it and forcing my voice back into something calmer, something that sounded more like her. Margaret found me in the linen room on the third day, refolding towels for the second time because my hands wouldn't stop shaking enough to do it right the first time. "You're overthinking the voice," she said, closing the door behind her. "Thea doesn't perform politeness. She simply doesn't waste time. Say less. Let silence do some of the work for you." "I keep almost slipping," I admitted. "Ruth noticed my walk this morning." "I saw." Margaret's face didn't soften, but there was something steady in the way she looked at me, like she had already thought this through long before I had. "You're carrying yourself like someone who is trying very hard not to be noticed. That, in itself, gets noticed. Your mother has never once tried to disappear in this house. She simply moves like someone who belongs. You need to move the same way, even if you don't feel like you do." "That's easier said than done." "Most things worth doing are," she said. "Straighten your shoulders. Slow your steps by half. And whatever you do, don't look at the floor when you speak to any of them. Thea never looks at the floor." I practiced in the mirror that night after my shift ended, walking, stopping, speaking small phrases out loud in the quietest version of my mother's voice I could manage. Good morning, sir. Right away, ma'am. Of course, Mr. Chester. Each phrase felt foreign in my mouth, like I was trying on a coat that belonged to someone else, one that didn't quite fit no matter how I adjusted it. By the time visiting hours came around, I was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical work. I took off the wig, scrubbed the light aging makeup Margaret had shown me how to apply around my eyes, and drove to the hospital still feeling like I hadn't fully returned to being myself. My mother was sitting up in bed when I walked in, color slowly coming back into her face, though she still looked smaller than I remembered, like the illness had taken up space that used to belong to her. "There's my girl," she said, reaching for my hand. "How are you feeling?" "Tired. Better than yesterday, though." She studied my face for a moment, the way she always could tell when something was sitting heavy on me. "How did it go today?" I hesitated. I hadn't planned on telling her everything, not wanting to add worry on top of everything else her body was already fighting, but she asked, and I had never been good at lying to my mother, even now, when lying to everyone else had become my whole day. "Ruth almost caught me," I admitted. "The way I was walking. And I keep slipping with my voice. Margaret's been helping me, but Mom, I don't know if I can keep doing this without someone figuring it out." My mother's face changed, the tiredness giving way to something sharper, something worried in a different way. "Fiona, I don't like this," she said. "I never wanted this for you. If they find out, you could be arrested. Or worse, you could ruin both our reputations in that house forever. We'd lose everything anyway, just in a different way." "I know the risk, Mom. But I saw the hospital bill. We don't have another option right now. Not one that keeps the apartment and keeps you getting the care you need." "There has to be another way." "There isn't. Not right now." I squeezed her hand gently. "It's only until you're well enough to go back. Three weeks. That's what the doctor said. I can manage three weeks." She looked at me for a long moment, and I could see her weighing the guilt of letting me do this against the fear of what would happen if we didn't. "Promise me," she finally said. "Promise me the moment I'm cleared to work again, you stop. No matter what. Even if it feels easier to keep going. Even if something changes in that house that makes you want to stay a little longer." I didn't understand yet what she meant by that last part. I wouldn't understand it for weeks. "I promise," I said. "The second you're better, this ends. I'm not doing this because I want to be someone else, Mom. I'm doing it because I love you, and I'm not losing you or this family over rent money." She pulled me into a hug, careful of the IV still taped to her arm, and held on longer than she normally would have. "You're a good daughter," she whispered. "I just hope this doesn't cost you more than either of us realizes." I told her it wouldn't. I believed it when I said it. I had no idea yet how wrong I was.