For five years I had lived in a low constant terror of their disapproval, checking my phone every ten minutes, braced for the next small failure.

And now I simply turned the whole apparatus off, name by name, and leaned back against the headrest, and took what felt like the first full, unafraid breath of my adult life.

Chapter 14 — Meredith at O’Hare

By the time I landed at O’Hare, Meredith Kessler was waiting at a quiet coffee shop in Terminal 1 — a sharp, brilliant woman who had been my mother’s closest friend, and who had, I suspected, been waiting five years for this call without ever once saying so.

She slid a cup of tea across the table and laid down three blue folders.