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Her eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”

“I mean—”

“You might want to fix that sentence.”

I laughed weakly. “You know what I mean.”

“Try again.”

“I said I’d never stay with a man that did that to me.”

“Better.”

“I’d never be the woman sitting at home knowing my husband was out doing whatever and taking pride in the fact that he came home.”

Mama nodded. “I understand that.”

“And then…” My eyes filled. “I became the woman doing it to someone else.”

She squeezed my hand.

“I became the woman who knew there was a wife and still stayed.” Tears slipped down my cheeks. “Sometimes I feel like I became everything I judged you for from the opposite side.”

Mama watched me cry, then she pulled her hand back. “Blair.”

I looked up.

“You did something wrong.”

I nodded.

“But do not turn my pain into some generational curse you’re destined to carry. I stayed with your daddy for reasons that made sense to me at the time. You made choices that made sense to you at the time.”

“That doesn’t make them right.”

“I didn’t say it did.” She tilted her head. “Understanding why you made a decision is not the same as saying the decision was good.”

That sounded suspiciously like Sydnee.

I narrowed my eyes. “Have you and my therapist been talking?”

Mama smiled. “No, baby. Do you know what else I had to learn?”

“What?”

“I spent a long time putting more anger on the women than I put on your father.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“Because it was easier.”

She shrugged. “I loved him. He was the father of my children, my husband, and my person. So if I put the biggest piece of blame on some woman outside my house, I didn’t have to fully look at the person sleeping beside me.”

Mama continued. “Now, did I hate some of those women?”

She laughed. “Baby. I wished shit on them that probably had angels taking notes.”

“Mama!”