"Amma," she said. The word came out of a depth she had not known she could access yet.
Her mother held out her arms.
She stood in the doorway for one moment — aware of Nair beside her, aware of the investigation and the weight of the night that was still not recovered, aware of everything that was still unresolved and everything that was about to be. And then she stepped through the door and into her mother's arms and she held on, and her mother held back, and the palace had a new room now that had always been there and she had simply not been able to find the entrance.
It took twenty minutes before she could speak properly. Her mother sat with her on the familiar sofa — old upholstery, a green she had looked at her whole life, the specific worn patch on the left armrest where her father's hand had always rested, her father who had been gone for six years and whose absence was part of the palace too, stored in the corner of a room she was not ready to enter yet. Nair sat across from them, respectfully quiet, giving the reunion the time it required.
"The key," she said finally. "Amma. Layla had a key to this apartment. How?"
Her mother's face became very still. "I gave it to her," she said. The words were difficult — not from shame, from the specific difficulty of someone who had done something with the best intentions and had learned too late what the best intentions had enabled. "She came here six months ago. After you and she had — after. She said she was worried about you. She said you were not well, that you were — that you had been having problems, mental health problems, that you were refusing help. She said she wanted to be able to check on you, to make sure—" She stopped. "She was very convincing. She was very calm. She made me feel that I was part of the solution." She looked at her daughter. "I had been trying to call you. You weren't returning my calls in those months. I was already afraid."
"Because Layla told you not to press me," she said. "Because she had told you I was fragile and calling would make it worse."
"Yes," her mother said. Quietly.
"She isolated me from you by making you believe contact would harm me," she said. "And then she used your worry to get a key to your apartment. As leverage. As a way of saying: I can access the people you love. I can get to them." She looked at her mother steadily. "She never came here again, did she. After she had the key."
"No," her mother said. "I heard nothing from her."
