“You can’t do this because you’re upset,” he said, in the reasonable, faintly condescending voice he used when he wanted to remind me I was the emotional one.

“Mom’s already booked half the trip.

You’re going to embarrass all of us.”

“Booked it with whose card?” I asked.

There was a silence, and I let it sit, and in the background of it I heard Lorraine’s voice, sharp and certain: “Don’t you interrogate your husband.”

I almost thanked her.

Because that — her voice, on my line, defending the spending — was the last small confirmation I had been waiting for.

The two of them were not separate problems.