“I had no idea.” “You never asked, Colton,” his mother said.

There was no anger in it, which was what made it land the way it did.

It just sat there in the room, quiet and true, and it cut him deeper than any shout could have.

I have wondered whether Colton would have changed if she’d screamed at him instead — if she’d let loose forty years of a son’s neglect in one furious torrent, told him what a disappointment he’d been, made him feel the full size of his failure.

And I’ve concluded that he probably wouldn’t have, and that Edith, in her wisdom, knew it.