Maggie looked out into the dark garden, though she couldn’t possibly see anything except the reflection of herself and Laura in the black window glass. “At first because I wondered what I had pushed on my daughter that contributed to the decisions she had made.” She looked at Laura and smiled sadly. “Honestly, I wasn’t a very good mother. I worried far too much about the next thing we needed to achieve, the next hoop to be jumped through. I looked at all her opportunities and thought about what I could have done with them, if I’d had the chance. Worse still, I told her. Asher was an easier child, or maybe I was a more relaxed parent, I don’t know. But I had a litany of mistakes to go over in my head while the silence between us got louder and louder.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think,” said Laura, trying to be encouraging.

Maggie looked away from the window. “I bugged her about her grades, I talked to her about my divorce, I bad-mouthed her father, I compared her to her brother, I said people would think less of her if she went out dressed like that, I asked her if she was worried about her acne, I said she should get a personal trainer to help with her weight, I pushed solutions for every single problem she tried to share with me, I pressured her to take more AP classes than she needed, got her tutors for everything, and made her take fencing because someone told me it would help with college applications.” She shrugged. “She hated it. And that’s what I remember off the top of my head, I could go on and on.” Her face was calm, her eyes dry, but Laura found it hard to look at her. “Never once did I pause to ask myself if this was something that would matter in ten years. Am I making decisions that will strengthen our relationship for the next forty years, which is when most of it will happen?” She shook her head. “Not even once.” She paused. “Not until it was too late.” She let tears overflow and run down her cheeks unstopped. “You convince yourself you’re building a safety net for your kids when in fact it’s a trap they’ll spend the rest of their lives trying to get free of.” There was a pause, then she said, “I think I’m drunk. I’m talking bullshit.”

Laura stood and took Maggie’s glass over to the sink, looking at the clock and wondering if it was too late for a cup of tea. “Maggie, why don’t you go to sleep now, and tomorrow go see her? Go to her, to her house. Take her a present for the baby and tell her what you told me. Don’t spend any more time thinking about it, fix it.”