“He doesn’t want to be married to me,” she says. “He just doesn’t want to fail.” She swallows. “Do you think he’d win?” She knits her hands together. “He might win.”

“Abigail,” Mom says. “No matter what he says about custody, no matter what he tries to hold over you...you can’t live like that.”

Abigail shrugs off the words. “It’s easy for you to say, you don’t get it. Sam—”

“It’s for Sam I’m saying this,” Mom insists. “Sam and you. Think what it’ll do to him, Abigail, to watch you in a marriage that’s destroying you. You think you can hide that from him? He already senses it—can’t you see that?” She looks at me. “You see it, don’t you, Gillian? You’re just going to mess with that boy’s mind if you’re acting like everything’s fine when he knows it’s not. Thinking he’s supposed to pretend he’s part of a happy family when he knows he isn’t. Don’t make him live inside some performance where he can’t tell up from down.”

Abigail glares at Mom.

“And who are you to talk about performance? Don’t mind my daughter, Mrs. Brandt, she’s just a little tired today. Growing up with you was nothing but performance, Mom,” she snaps. “I was the naughty puppet in the puppet theater. A theater full of all sorts of fiction. So don’t talk to me about performance!”

Mom just stands there, letting the words come at her.

“I’m sorry, Abigail,” she says steadily. “I’m very sorry you felt all those things. But I want you to be happy, and I always have. And I don’t want you to make the mistakes I made, by pretending things were all right that weren’t all right. I understand why it’s so tempting—but in the end, you don’t help the people you think you’re helping.”

Abigail blinks at her. And suddenly it’s like all the fight goes out of her.

“I…Can I sleep here tonight?” She looks away. “I asked Dennis if he could rent a different room for tonight but he says why would he, we’re a family.” She swallows. “He doesn’t even like being married to me.”

“Of course. Gillian’s sleeping here too,” Mom says, with a glance my way. “There’s room for you both.”

Abigail frowns at me.

“You? Why?”

I glance over at Mom.

“How well-stocked is that minibar?” I say.

*

Abigail’s eyes widen as I tell the story.

“Extraordinary,” she says when I finish. “I suppose he put it out of his mind,” she goes on. “It should have occurred to him, that these days, somehow—but I suppose it was easier to forget.”