Chapter 9 — The Pattern Was Older Than Us

It was the cousin’s message that opened the last door — it happened to me too, at her studio.

Before she was our mother, before she was anyone’s grandmother, Maud had run a youth program, years of it, working with other people’s children.

I had known this my whole life the way you know the furniture; I had never once thought about what it meant.

Now I did.

Lowell and I began, carefully, to ask — not to accuse, not to assume, only to ask the people who had been there.