Three years.

I told myself I wouldn’t come back. I told myself the modeling contracts, the city noise, the men who paid to look at me but never really saw me, were enough. I told myself my mother’s voice had finally lost its power.

I was wrong.

The second I stepped through the front door of the house I used to call home, the air felt thicker, heavier, like it still carried every sharp word she’d ever thrown at me. Maria stood in the foyer in a cream silk blouse and tailored trousers, looking exactly like the woman who had spent eighteen years teaching me that love was conditional and...