I did not want him to see me cry, not over that, not yet.

He was watching me the way he watched everything, closely, for clues about what I needed and what might cost him, and I knew instinctively that if he saw the word Mom reduce me to tears, he might read it as a burden, as evidence that I needed the word from him, and then he would start giving it to me out of duty rather than letting it arrive on its own.

So I hid my face in a drawer and let him think I was only looking for a charger, and I let the enormous thing that had just happened stay small and unremarked, which was the only way, with him, to let it be real.

“It’s right there on the kitchen counter,” I said, and I was proud of how steady I kept my voice.