He looked at me with a sadness that felt late, but not false.
“I should have called you,” he said. “More than I did. I told myself you were busy. I told myself you’d reach out when you needed us.”
“I did need you,” I said.
His face crumpled slightly.
The sight made me look away.
There are moments when anger is easier than grief because anger gives you something to hold. Grief only opens its hands and shows you what is missing.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Sarah, please,” my mother said. “Come to dinner.”
I met her eyes.
“Why?”
The question seemed to confuse her.
“Because we’re family.”
I waited.
She looked at Derek. Then at my father. Then back at me.
“Because we should talk.”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“That’s too broad.”
A flicker of irritation crossed her face, but she swallowed it.
“About your graduation. About what happened. About why I said what I said.”
“And why did you?”
The corridor seemed to tighten around us.
My mother looked suddenly exposed.
“I was scared,” she said.
I did not answer.
“You were brilliant as a child,” she continued, voice quieter now. “Always asking questions I couldn’t answer. Taking apart radios. Drawing machines. Your teachers said words like gifted, exceptional, advanced. And I was proud. I was.”
I remembered those teachers. I remembered my mother smiling at parent conferences, then growing quiet in the car when they suggested science camps and advanced programs we could not afford.
“But then everything with your uncle happened,” she said.
I froze.
My father’s head snapped toward her.
“Elaine,” he warned.
Derek looked between them. “What about Uncle Paul?”
My mother’s face changed as if she had said something she had not meant to say.
A memory stirred in me.
Uncle Paul had been my mother’s younger brother. In family stories, he was mentioned rarely and vaguely. A genius, people said. A dreamer. Someone who could have been great if he had been more practical. He died when I was nine, though no one ever explained much beyond “an accident” and “a difficult time.”
“What does Uncle Paul have to do with me?” I asked.
My mother pressed her lips together.
“Nothing,” my father said too quickly.
But it was too late.
The air had shifted.
Derek’s brows drew together. “Mom?”
She closed her eyes.
For a moment, I thought she might finally tell the truth.
Instead, she straightened.
“I shouldn’t have brought him up.”
“Too late,” I said.
“Sarah, not here.”
“Then where?”
My mother looked past me toward the reception area, where people in suits and graduation gowns moved beneath strings of red and white balloons.
“Dinner,” she said. “Come to dinner, and I’ll explain.”
