“I’ve asked myself that, over the years; if I failed her somehow, back then at the start.” She looks at me. “I don’t know, Gillian. Was it different with Abigail to how it was with you? Yes, absolutely. But it wasn’t that I didn’t love her as much. I just felt so much better about myself as your mother. You were such a relief.” She looks at me. “You were quiet, you would just sit in my lap and that would be enough for you. You never went off looking for trouble, I never had to worry about you like that. Abigail just…she lunged at danger. You were my little fraidy-cat.”

I’ve heard this before—plenty of times—and I still dislike hearing it. Apparently everything frightened me as a small child: swings; the ocean; dogs, cats, bicycles, vacuum cleaners; you name it. Mouse, Dad called me: a nickname that no doubt he meant affectionately but which I grew to secretly hate. Abigail was the one who would throw herself at danger “like there was a self-destruct trigger inside her,” as Mom used to put it.

So I’ve heard these comparisons plenty, and I’m not sure that they’re flattering to either me or my sister, but until today I’ve always taken them pretty much at face value: me and my timidity, Abigail and her recklessness. But suddenly I wonder how Abigail’s recklessness might have looked to another parent. If instead of self-destruction and a wanton urge for danger, they would have seen a fearless, adventurous child. If they would have been impressed by Abigail’s resilience and her indifference to pain. If they would have been proud.

“What if those weren’t bad things, Mom?” I say now. “I mean, what if Abigail was just…really independent? And…brave?”

I wonder if Mom even realizes the bias that was in her from the start: when she held Abigail for the first time, along with the wave of love, how much fear she felt. Not just the regular new-parent fear, but fear of what was inside her daughter; of whatever genes lay coded inside her, because for some strange reason we tend to think the genes we have produced are safer than the rest. Does Mom understand the difference it made that from the minute I was born she trusted my genes—and Abigail never got the same benefit?

“To tell you the truth, Gillian,” Mom sighs, “I think I just thought that it would all be much easier.” She looks at me, then over at Sam, mouth open, head drooping. “Wasn’t that a silly thing to think? I’d just had so much time to watch other people become mothers, I suppose I thought I could do it better. And then, well…it was so hard.”