“But I know what happens if I go back in.

I’d be in that room again, listening for whether you’d say it this time.

Every family dinner.

Every time your mother opened her mouth.

I’d be forty-one years old sitting at a table doing the same arithmetic I did at thirty-one.

“And the awful part is that you might say it now.

You probably would.

And I would still be the woman sitting there finding out.”

I said, “That’s not fair to who I am now.”

And Carmen said, “No, it isn’t.