A woman like my mother does not fear consequences so much as she fears the loss of her instrument — the discovery that the guilt she had always been able to summon in me was finally, permanently, out of her reach.

I did not say any of this to her.

There was nothing left worth saying.

I had spent a lifetime explaining myself to my mother, and I was done.

I set her suitcases in the hall and let the lawful machinery I had set in motion carry her the rest of the way out of our lives.

Chapter 26 — The Lock