He looked at her with a tired, quiet sadness.

“You ended it,” he said, “when you planned your sister’s funeral with the man who tried to kill her.” My mother was the last.

For months she insisted she’d only been manipulated, but the recordings showed she had pushed to hasten my death of her own will, and she was sentenced for what the facts proved. I’m your mother, she said to me, and I felt the old guilt rise, and I let it pass through me without obeying it.

“Being a mother was a responsibility,” I said.

“Not a permanent pass to move in and out of my life doing harm.” Then I walked away — actually walked, on my own unsteady legs.

The months after the gala were harder than the gala itself, and I think that surprised everyone but my physical therapist.