They took over the common spaces, the kitchen, the pool, the patio.
And, worst of all, they had pressured my mother, gently at first and then not gently, into handing over the cards connected to the monthly allowance I sent, until the money I wired for her care was flowing straight into their hands.
And through all of it, every single time I called from overseas, my mother had held the phone up to her face and smiled and told me everything was wonderful, everything was fine, that she was happy and comfortable and well.
She had lied to me for two years.
And she had done it, I would learn, out of the purest and most misguided love.
I have had to forgive my mother for those two years of lies, and it was, strangely, one of the harder parts of all of it, harder than forgiving Julian and Chloe, whom I do not intend to forgive at all.
Because a part of me was angry at her, at first, in a way I was ashamed of.
If she had only told me, I kept thinking, I could have ended it in a week, from anywhere in the world, with a single phone call.
Two years of her suffering could have been two days.
