And finally said, “I wasn’t trying to look prettier. I was trying to stop looking like you.”
I felt as though she’d slapped me.
“Oh.”
“Mom, that’s not—”
“No. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t.
I stood.
“Apparently I’m the last person in this family who understands what’s happening.”
“Isabella.”
Mark caught my wrist.
“Wait.”
Zoe was crying now.
“I didn’t mean you’re ugly.”
I laughed once.
“That’s comforting.”
“Mom, please.”
Mark turned toward her.
“Tell her.”
Zoe wiped her face.
“Miranda said something.”
There it was.
“What?”
Zoe looked terrified.
“Back in September, I was at Dad’s. Miranda was doing her makeup. I was sitting in the bathroom talking to her.”
Mark went completely still.
“She looked at me in the mirror and said I had your face.”
“Okay.”
“All of it.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then she said…”
Zoe stared at the floor.
“She said, ‘You’d better hope you age better than she did.'”
Nobody moved.
Mark’s face changed.
“She said that?”
“She was joking.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Yes.”
One sentence.
Probably 11 seconds of Miranda’s life.
Five months of Zoe’s.
“I came home and looked at myself,” Zoe whispered. “And then I came down here.”
She pointed toward the box.
“I found that picture.”
The green dress.
“I thought you looked beautiful.”
I swallowed.
“Then what was the problem?”
“I didn’t know!”
Her voice rose.
“I didn’t know if I thought that because you’re my mom. So I kept looking.”
“Kept looking?”
Zoe nodded.
“For months.”
My heart sank.
She’d come into this basement and opened that box again and again.
While I cooked dinner upstairs.
While I asked how school was and accepted “fine.”
While I congratulated myself for giving my teenager space.
My daughter had been comparing her 16-year-old face to photographs of mine, trying to determine what would happen to her.
Then other things started rearranging themselves in my memory.
Zoe deleting pictures I’d taken of her.
Refusing school photos because her smile looked “weird.”
Asking me once whether I’d ever considered Botox.
I’d laughed and asked if TikTok was melting her brain.
She hadn’t laughed back.
I’d noticed every clue.
I’d just given every one of them the wrong explanation.
“Why the fillers?”
“Miranda gets them.”
Mark closed his eyes.
Zoe touched her swollen lip.
“I asked her about it.”
“What did she say?”
“That there was nothing wrong with fixing something if it made you more confident.”
“And she gave you the money?”
“Yes.”
“Did she take you?”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“She said Dad would freak out if he knew.”
Mark looked sick.
“So she knew I’d say no.”
Zoe nodded.
“She gave me cash.”
“And you found someone to do it?”
Zoe’s silence answered me.
Mark stood.
He pulled out his phone.
“Mark—”
“No.”
He was already dialing Miranda.
She answered cheerfully.
“Hey, babe.”
“Did you give Zoe money for lip fillers?”
Silence.
Then, “Is she there?”
“Answer me.”
“I gave her some money.”
“You knew what it was for.”
“She was insecure.”
“She’s 16.”
“Mark, please don’t make this dramatic.”
I almost laughed.
He put her on speaker.
“Did you tell my daughter she’d better hope she aged better than her mother?”
A long pause.
“What?”
“In September.”
“I don’t remember.”
Zoe flinched.
Then Miranda laughed nervously.
“Oh, my God. That? It was a joke.”
Zoe stared at the phone.
Five months.
The woman didn’t even remember.
Miranda continued.
“Isabella and I aren’t exactly friends. Zoe knows that.”
I stepped closer.
“Zoe also knows you’re an adult.”
Silence.
“Isabella—”
“No. You don’t get to explain this away.”
Mark looked at Zoe, then back at the phone.
“You gave my daughter money to change her face after teaching her there was something wrong with the face she had.”
“I did not teach her that.”
“Then why did you tell her not to tell me?”
No answer.
“I was trying to support her. She hated her lips, Mark. What was I supposed to do, tell her she looked perfect and wait for her to stop believing me?”
Zoe’s face crumpled.
Mark stared at Miranda’s name on the screen.
“No. You were supposed to ask why my 16-year-old daughter suddenly hated her own face.”
Silence.
“Especially after you were the one who gave her a reason to.”
Miranda started crying.
Mark didn’t soften.
“Zoe won’t be staying at our house until I figure out what happens next.”
“You’re choosing your ex-wife over me?”
“No.”
His eyes stayed on Zoe.
“I’m choosing my daughter.”
He ended the call.
The room went quiet.
I looked down at the green-dress photograph.
“You know what I remember about this?”
Zoe shook her head.
“I hated that dress.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“It was the only nice thing that still fit me. I had heartburn every day. My ankles were enormous. Your father kept taking pictures when I told him not to.”
Mark almost smiled.
“You looked beautiful.”
“You were annoying.”
“I was right.”
Zoe laughed through her tears.
I sat beside her.
