She had been the one, unknowingly, who set the stage for all of it — a lifetime of small comparisons between her daughters, the open door, the trust she gave both of them.

And she was the one who, in the end, refused to be managed for the extra thirty seconds that would have mattered.

Christopher had almost gotten her, too.

She was overwhelmed, and grieving, and a smooth voice was telling her she was too upset to trust what she was hearing — the same technique, aimed at her now, that had worked on me for seven years.

For a moment I lay there and did not know which way it would break, whether my mother would let herself be soothed back from the coffin like a hysterical woman, or whether the thing in her that was still a mother would win.