And I cannot fully imagine what those days of waiting were like — hoping, with a mother’s whole heart, that her son would prove her wrong, that no one would come looking, that she had misjudged him; and knowing, with a lifetime’s clear eyes, that she probably had not.

She spent those days loving a son and preparing for his betrayal at the same time, and there is no lonelier place a human being can stand than that.

When the abandonment came, it broke her heart and confirmed her judgment in the same instant.

She had hoped to lose the bet.

She had prepared, meticulously, to win it.

And she won it, which is to say she lost the thing that mattered, which was any remaining illusion that her son was who she had raised him to be.

Chapter 8 — The Courthouse