I shook my head.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No,” I repeated. “I’m not going to sit through a celebration where everyone pretends this is a normal family moment while you decide how much truth I deserve.”
Her eyes filled at last.
“Then coffee,” she said. “Tomorrow morning. Just you and me.”
The request surprised me.
My father looked surprised too.
Derek watched me carefully.
I wanted to refuse. Every instinct built from years of disappointment told me not to step back into the old room, not to sit across from her and offer another chance to minimize what she had done.
But Uncle Paul’s name had opened something.
A door in a hallway I had thought was sealed.
“What time?” I asked.
My mother exhaled.
“Nine?”
“Seven-thirty,” I said. “I have meetings.”
“Seven-thirty,” she agreed quickly.
“I choose the place.”
“Of course.”
“And if you lie to me, I leave.”
She flinched.
“All right.”
I looked at my father.
“Does this involve you too?”
He hesitated.
“Yes,” he said softly.
“Then you should come.”
My mother turned sharply. “But you said just us.”
“I changed my mind,” I said.
For the first time that day, I saw something like respect pass across Derek’s face.
I left before anyone could say more.
Outside, campus was impossibly beautiful. Families posed beneath palm trees. Graduates threw caps into the air. Bouquets wrapped in cellophane flashed pink and yellow in the sun. Everywhere I looked, people were holding one another.
I walked through it all alone, but it did not feel the same as before.
Two years earlier, loneliness had wrapped around me like proof of being unwanted.
Today, it felt more like space.
Painful space, yes.
But space I owned.
At the reception, I became Dr. Mitchell again. Investors shook my hand. Faculty members asked about partnerships. A dean from the engineering school told me they were developing a new initiative around energy access and wanted Solar Reach involved.
I answered. I smiled. I performed competence with the ease of long practice.
But beneath it all, Uncle Paul’s name kept repeating.
Everything with your uncle.
