Not you and Dad talking about it in the car and then telling me at dinner.”

“Lia—”

“That’s what you’d do.” It was not an accusation; she said it the way you’d point out a fact about the weather. “You’d work it out together and then you’d sit me down and say we’ve been thinking.

And I’d say okay because you’d already decided.”

I dried my hands on a towel and did not say anything for a moment, because she was completely right and because I was fifteen years into being her mother and had never once been called on it that cleanly.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s yours.”