And she had seen, across those years of letters and homecomings, what the work had left in me, the good and the hard of it both, the steadiness and the watchfulness and the particular quiet that never quite switched off.

I mention this now, at the beginning, because it matters to what comes later.

Gavin looked at me across that dinner table and that kitchen and saw a slight, quiet woman who kept her eyes down.

My mother knew she was looking at something else entirely.

And she had promised me, years before, that she would never tell a soul.

Chapter 3 — A Fresh Start, I Wanted to Believe