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Mom and Dad disappear into their bedroom and when they come out a while later, Mom announces the plan. We are moving overseas.

“Really?”

I ask. “I was thinking we’d move across the country or something.”

“We have to get far away. Possibly get new identities,”

Mom says. “Your passport, , is thankfully still valid.”

We got it just before graduation so I could take a trip to Tulum with Pauline. I remember how it was good for ten years.

“I think if we do a land border crossing they won’t check,”

Mom says. “We get to Mexico and can fly from there and once we’re somewhere new, we look into getting false identities.”

“Mom, I never knew you had such a criminal mind,” I say.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Mom says.

“Happy desperate,”

Dad clarifies. “Good desperate.”

“What are we going to do for money?”

Melissa asks. “Can we sell Dad’s business? Or the house?”

“We can’t do anything to arouse suspicion,”

Mom says. “We’ll have to come up with some kind of public excuse why we’re going away. We can say it’s some sort of family emergency with Dad’s family since he’s not from here.”

“We should make it public, so it doesn’t seem like we’re slinking off,” Dad says.

“We could announce it at church,”

Mom says. “Tomorrow. Go as a family to say our goodbyes.”

“And I’ll clarify the miracle with Father Mercer,”

Dad says. “Say that my sister was cured of stage-four cancer or something.”

“You don’t have a sister,”

Melissa says.

“Father Mercer won’t know and God won’t mind a little fib to protect .”

“Maybe we say the miracle is that we’re a family again,”

Mom says, looking at Dad, then Melissa, then me. “After what we’ve been through, it counts. And it wouldn’t be a lie.”

Dad puts his hand on hers. “No, it wouldn’t,”

he says in a quiet voice.

“That still doesn’t answer the question about money. How will we live?” I ask.

“For starters, there’s still seventy thousand dollars left in the memorial fund,”

Dad says, looking to Mom.

She nods and adds: “And Pauline sold her house a few years back and left some of the proceeds to me. That’s two hundred thousand right there.”

Dad and Melissa both gasp out loud. This is news to them. “Why’d she do that?”

Melissa asks.

“I don’t know. I never used the money,”

Mom says. “So it’s just sitting in an account, accruing interest. We’ll use that. Then we can transfer the deed to this house to her and she can live in it or sell it.” Mom pauses solemnly. “If she ever comes back.”

Her face twists in pain, the way it would when she’d get one of her migraines. I’d assumed that Mom had estranged herself from Pauline, the way she had with Dad, the way she had with me, even when I came back. But now I see it’s the other way around. Pauline cut off contact with Mom. How?

Why? Aunt Pauline needed Mom. She always had. Mom was the only real mother she’d ever known, she’d told me over and over when I was little.

I sent her the invitation to Melissa’s party assuming she’d want to come back, that she’d been waiting for an opening. It hadn’t occurred to me that Mom was the one waiting for her own invitation.

She lost us both. Poor Mom. Poor Pauline.

“Why did Pauline go away?”

I ask. “Why did she stop talking to you?”

“She thought it was her fault,”

Mom says. “Because she got you the bike. She said she couldn’t face me. Couldn’t face herself.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say.

“I know,”

Mom says quietly. “I should’ve tried harder, but honestly, when two people are drowning, they only drag each other under. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t even save myself.”

“But now we can! We can move to New Zealand. We can all be together again.”

“That’s the first place they’d look for us,” Dad says.

“If they look for us. Which they might but even so, who cares? This is Pauline!”

I cry. “She’s your sister.” I look at Melissa now. I can’t imagine ever being separated from her like that. It would kill me. Again.

“I know,”

Mom says softly. “And you’re my daughter. And right now, being with you is my priority.”

She takes my hand and squeezes. There are tears in her eyes, a smile on her face. For her, the sacrifice is worth it. Was Melissa right? Was Virginia Woolf right?

You have to subtract something to add something? Gain a daughter, lose a sister. Gain a daughter, lose a life. Why is the common denominator losing? Why is the common denominator me?