But Joy, my too-insightful daughter, has taken it one step further. She understands that if I weren’t a mother, I’d have had other choices, and, stricken, says, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I ask. To hug her would give credence to what she is thinking, so I simply touch her cheek. “It’s forbidden, because I chose to be a photographer long before you were born. I love my work. I would not love being at school again. In another life, though, I’d teach fine art.”

“Dad would approve,” Anne says. “He always thought photography was a faux art.”

“Christ, Anne,” Margo scolds.

“What? It’s true.”

Joy redeems herself by cutting in. “Your turn, Margo. What’s yours?”

“Forbidden desire?” She takes her time crossing to the sink, searching for rubber gloves in the under-cabinet, pulling them on. Then she turns and holds up a hot pink finger. “Once, just once, I want to sing with Bradley Cooper.”

“Well, that’s a good one,” says Anne. “You can’t sing.”

“None of us can,” I point out and break into Happy Birthday to prove it. Joy covers her ears, but I’m smiling at the memory it brings. “If we celebrated a birthday anywhere but home, people around us would laugh. We were awful.”

“Still are,” Margo says, “but that’s the point of this truth. It’s something I know I can’t have, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it. Okay, smarty pants,” she goads Anne, “what’s yours?”

Smarty pants. If that isn’t a flash from the past, I don’t know what is. It was Margo’s favorite epithet, used as many times on me as on Anne, and with the same goading now as then. But this isn’t the time to goad. Anne is too sensitive. I can’t believe Margo doesn’t see that.

Anne continues to spoon leftovers into plastic containers—to spoon them slowly and with great care. I’m starting to wonder whether she’s too threatened to confess her forbidden desire, when she raises her eyes. They land hard on Margo. “I want a week alone with Mom.”

I don’t know what to say.

Nor does Margo, to judge from her silence. Finally, she says, “You hated Mom.”

“I never knew Mom. You got her the most. You had her all to yourself for two years. Then you came along, Mal, and yeah, you had to share her with Margo, but two is better than three. I was third. I got the dregs. If Dad hadn’t paid attention to me, no one would have.”

I can understand her wanting Mom’s undivided attention. We all did. But her vehemence? Her resentment? Her loving Dad more because she felt Mom loved her less? I always thought her loyalty to him came from the fact that he coddled her.

Feeling horrible now, I ask, “Did you really think that?”

“Yes.”