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The waitress asks in a hushed voice if we’d prefer still or sparkling water. I say one and my mother says the other. We cannot even agree about water, apparently.

“How was Hawaii?” she asks once we’re alone again.

Already the trip has become a blur in my head, a few images, a snippet of conversation left to represent hours and days and weeks. Mostly, it’s now just an overall feeling of warmth, and hope, of being made new. “It was really good.” I suppose I should ask about Steven, or my asshole step-sibling, or her job, but I don’t give a shit about any of them. I give negative shits about them. And I’m so sick of doing things just to be polite or because someone expects it of me.

“They’re saying in the news that you broke up with that guitarist.”

I don’t want to tell her the truth because she hated Six the one time they met and it would thrill her. That I’ve fallen for a doctor would thrill her even more. One of many reasons she’ll never know. I sigh. “Yes.”

“Good,” she says. “I never liked him.”

“Really, Mom?” I ask with a bitter laugh. “Gosh, you were so subtle about it.”

She frowns. “He has a drinking problem,” she says. “You understand why I wouldn’t want that for you.”

“Because they’re so hard to be faithful to?” I ask. It’s a low blow, even from me.

Her mouth pinches. “I thought we weren’t going to throw things in each other’s faces?” she asks.

“Sorry,” I mutter. I return my gaze to the menu. This is the kind of place she likes. Fancy salads ruined by things like beets and quail eggs. So neither the food nor the conversation will be enjoyable.

“I was working all day,” she says, breaking the silence, “going to law school at night, trying to get us into a better neighborhood and you into a better school and then I’d come home to your father resenting me for it. I spent the last year of our marriage trying to study and work and take care of you while your father went out and got drunk. I know I made mistakes, but back then, Steven was the only one telling me I was doing okay, who was impressed at how I did it all.”

Of course he was, I think sullenly. He thought you’d wind up fucking him, and he was right.

But then I think of Josh. Josh, the only person who’s impressed with what I take on. Josh, telling me I deserve more. It’s seductive, having someone on your side for once. “We don’t have to rehash it all.”

She stares straight ahead, as if I haven’t spoken. “I will never try to tell anyone I handled it the right way. Steven won’t either. I just wish you’d try to understand that even if I’m the villain in this story you’ve created, I’m not the only one.”

So I guess we’re doing this here, over our gross lunch of water and quail egg salad.

“You could have sent Dad to rehab or something,” I say.

She gives a short, unhappy laugh. “You have forgotten some significant parts of your father’s personality if you think he was going to let anyone force him into rehab. Where do you think you got that stubborn streak of yours?”

I have over a decade of accusations inside me, the same ones I’ve been making all along, but there’s not the same vigor behind them. Something has changed in me these past few weeks. Maybe I just have some empathy now for moral gray areas, given how I’ve ventured into one. “Maybe you’re right. I guess I just wish things had been different.”

She presses her palms flat to the table and stares at her lap, swallowing hard. “I’ll never forgive myself for that day,” she says. I stiffen. This is something we do not discuss, ever, and I want to stop her but I can’t. “I was in court when the school called to say you hadn’t shown up and I let it go to voicemail. If I’d just checked, maybe—”

Her voice cracks and she stops talking.

I feel an ache in my chest, as if my lungs are squeezing tight. I didn’t know she was blaming herself for what happened all this time. Of all the things she did wrong, this isn’t one of them.

“That wasn’t your fault,” I tell her. I know in my rare honest moment that my father was no saint. He broke my nose, for God’s sake. It’s all the years afterward I blame her for. “But you took me from my home, Mom, and from my school, and from my father, and you just—” My throat clogs. “Left. You were never there. Everyone in that household treated me like I wasn’t welcome and wasn’t even human and you just looked the other way.”

I wait for her denials, her arguments. She’s a lawyer, after all. It’s what she does best. But when I look up at her, her eyes are damp. “I know,” she says, staring at her hands, her voice raspy. “And that’s harder for me to live with than anything else, because I can’t get those years back and I don’t know where we go now.”

It’s more than she’s ever said before. I swallow hard and then force a smile. “Hopefully someplace with burgers. You know I hate salad.”

Her eyes finally find mine and we both laugh. Something feels like it’s shifting. Things aren’t perfect and they never will be, but maybe I can learn to live in the gray area just a little.

41

DREW

Ben, after much prodding and a few threats, finally receives the requested documents. They arrive so woefully incomplete he thinks I need a forensic accountant to figure out what’s gone on.

I’m back in Europe finishing the last few dates of the tour when he calls to discuss it. I have to go shut myself in the bathroom to talk. “If they’re being this cagey about a routine document request, there’s almost no chance they’re not hiding something major,” he says.