I swallow a smile. My dad has never acted so hard in his life. I didn’t know he had it in him.

“Kitchen’s this way, Mom.”

A minute later, the camera crew follows as we sit around my small dining room table.

“Should I say grace?” my dad asks, an ironic twinkle in eye.

“Jesus Christ,” Ada Mae mutters.

“Amen,” I finish.

I sip my iced tea as Ada Mae tries to make heads or tails of the pasta. “I checked, Mom. It’s all keto friendly.”

“Right. This is lovely.” She picks up her fork and beams at me, all white teeth and perfectly lined lips. “Thanks, baby.”

I swallow and blink and settle back in my chair, thrown off guard. Because for a split second—barely the space between breaths—I’m given what I’ve always yearned for. A family. A proud mom, a present dad, and me, all sitting around the dinner table. That’s the picture the film crew captures.

And in the very next instant, everything evaporates. Conversation, history, affection, expectations. All of it, poof, gone. This is the end of the end of the line. The film crew packs up in silence, and we sit awkwardly, shuffling squash noodles around on our plates. They leave and I release a long breath. So does my dad. My mom finishes her entire glass of wine and pours a second.

“Now that they’re gone?” she asks, plaintively, waving the bottle.

“I don’t drink. I mean it.”

“Cut the crap, Shelby. You sit here in your cozy thrift-store house and your thrift-store dress and your middle-aged hairstyle and you expect me to believe you’re happy? And not only that, but sober? What a waste of a future. You could be making millions and winning awards and getting VIP treatment and instead you’re playing Little House on the Prairie with your high school boyfriend.”

My dad clears his throat gruffly. “That’s enough, Ada—”

“And don’t even get me started on you, Danny. Twenty-eight years and you haven’t changed one bit. Still the same old roughneck construction worker, feeding her excuses and chocolate donuts.”

I thought she couldn’t hurt me anymore. If you had asked me two hours ago if I could handle my mother’s sharp tongue, I would have laughed in your face. I would have told you I’d spent decades with her biting criticism. That “you should have” and “you aren’t even” and I are practically siblings.

But I was wrong.

A loud, messy sniff escapes before I can prevent it and the sound draws my parents’ attention like a magnet. My dad’s shoulders sink. My mom rolls her eyes and stands.

“Not this again. God, you’re such a victim. Lord knows I tried to make you tough, but some people aren’t cut out for success. Some people rise with the cream, others sink with the custard.”