Lily’s blurred memory creates holes that Lily herself will work to fill in. Someone else needs to tell her mother’s story, and Lily will try to do so by journeying into her mother’s past and going everywhere her mother has been. T. Ray abuses his position as Lily’s father when he apparently lies, telling Lily that her mother was leaving in part to abandon her. This is not a story that fits Lily’s understanding of motherhood and love, so she becomes disturbed enough to leave her cold father behind and seek a more believable truth.