They are defenses wearing an apology’s clothing, designed to end a conflict while conceding nothing, to make the other person’s hurt the problem rather than one’s own conduct.

A real apology is different in kind, not degree, and it is excruciating to give, because it requires you to do the one thing the ego most violently resists: to say, without qualification or excuse, I did wrong, and the wrong was mine, and I understand why it hurt you, and I am not asking you to make me feel better about it. My mother had never once, in my entire life, managed that.

She had always found the escape hatch — the extenuating circumstance, the shifted blame, the but that turned the apology back into a defense.

And in that living room, beside the taped boxes, she finally did not. Because your father and I enjoyed feeling like you still needed us. There was no but after it.