She had insisted on a photograph of just herself and Julian, just the two of them, and had held the pose long after the photographer was done, her hand pressed flat over his heart.

When Julian and I had our first dance she had watched from the edge of the floor with her arms crossed and her face doing something I hadn’t wanted to look at directly.

And during the toasts, when it was her turn, she had stood and lifted her glass and said, “To my son.

My whole life.

Everything I have ever done, I did for him,” — and then she had sat down, without once saying my name, without once looking at me, and the room had clapped the uncertain clap of people who sense they’ve watched something a little off and would rather not have.

I had let it all go, that day, in the current of my own happiness.