But that anger did not survive contact with the truth of why she had stayed silent, which was that she loved me and had been convinced that my love was a fragile thing she had to protect by protecting me from her troubles.

You cannot stay angry at someone for loving you too selflessly, even when that selflessness cost her everything.

So I let the anger go, and I put it where it belonged instead, on the two people who had studied my mother’s goodness the way a thief studies a lock, and found the one opening in it, and let themselves in.

Chapter 6 — Why Didn’t You Tell Me?