She could have spent the whole afternoon making excuses for her.

“I love my daughter,” she went on.

“I can love her and still say that what she allowed was wrong.

I should have paid closer attention when she told me you weren’t sending money.

Something about it never added up.”

I told her it wasn’t her burden to carry by herself.

We were a room full of people staring at the broken pieces of a life we had all assumed was whole.

None of us could glue the old version back together.