Chapter 10 — What Brandon Had Done

I lay awake a long time that night, turning over what my husband had done, and the more I turned it the more remarkable it seemed to me.

He had not stormed downstairs on Christmas morning and torn into his mother.

He had not made the speech I would have made, the one that feels so good for eleven seconds and changes nothing, the one that would have let Gene cast herself as the wounded party and me as the hysteric who ruined the holiday.

He had done something harder and far more radical.