“No, you don’t.

You think it’s that I’d have looked stupid.

It’s not that.” She had her hands on her knees.

“It’s that she would have been telling the truth.

In front of everybody.

And I’d have spent the rest of my life knowing that the one time my mother was the honest person in a room, it was because of me.”

And then the fourth thing, which she said quietly, and which was not about me at all.

“And Willa’s had it since she was thirteen.