He sat down next to her chair and said: “Grandma Eleanor.

Did you love me because you thought I was really Mark’s, or did you love me?”

My mother’s face did the thing it does.

The reach, and the failure, and the frustration that turns into something close to rage and then collapses.

She got out “you” and “not” and then a sound that wasn’t a word, three times, and she hit the arm of the chair with her good hand.

And Noah — who is thirteen — said, “It’s okay.