I mourned the fantasy I had carried for thirty years, that if I were only good enough, obedient enough, generous enough, she would one day love me the way she had never quite managed to.

That mother had never existed, and hanging up the phone was the moment I finally buried her — not the real Salma, who was alive and furious and now poorer, but the imaginary one I had served my whole life.

You can grieve someone who is still living.

I grieved the mother I had invented, and then I put the phone down, and I went to find the two people who actually loved me.

Chapter 33 — Notarized

The next day all four of them signed a formal agreement before a notary.