“Um, are you okay?” I say. I pat her back and try to raise my head to look quizzically at my mother, who has just entered the kitchen carrying a large, heavy-looking box.

“Look what I found in the spare room,” my mother says, putting the box down gingerly on the counter and lifting something out of it. It is covered in bubble wrap. “Dad’s kos shel Eliyahu.” She carefully unwraps the protective layers and holds up a beautiful colored-glass goblet, meant to be filled to the top with wine and put in the center of the Passover table for the prophet Elijah—Eliyahu—to come visit.

“Remember all our family seders, when Dad was alive?” my mom says to Aunty Steph. “You were so little, but you would insist on staying up for the whole thing. I used to take you by the hand, and we’d open the door for Eliyahu together.” My mom sniffles a little. I forgot that she and Aunty Steph are always a little sad and miss my grandfather right before a holiday.

“Yeah,” Aunty Steph says, and holds me tighter for a minute before letting go.

“You know, he didn’t even tell me he was having doubts,” Aunty Steph says quietly. “We could have talked about them. We could have worked through them.”

I am confused. I don’t think Aunty Steph is talking about my zaidy, who died when I was little.

“Shmuel Yosef isn’t sure he wants to be religious anymore and told Aunty Steph last night that he will not be joining us at the seders,” my mother clues me in, carefully carrying the goblet through to the dining room, where the table is now set for tonight.

“Maybe he wants to be with God, but he doesn’t want to be with me,” Aunty Steph says, sounding really down.

“Stephie,” my mother says, coming back in to the kitchen and over to me and Aunty Steph. “You’re better off without him. He’s missing something, and he wasn’t done finding it. He might never find it.”

“But—” Aunty Steph says. “He didn’t grow up in a nice home like ours. He didn’t have a mother to raise him like we did.”

I see my mother stiffen and pull away. “It’s not your responsibility to take care of him, Steph. When you have children, trust me, there will be plenty to take care of. You don’t need a partner to drag you down. You have so much more to offer than he does.”

My own body stiffens. My mother did all this stuff just to have two kids, but she keeps saying things that make it sound like taking care of us is such a burden. I think about her snappishness these last few weeks and realize it’s not just about Passover. All the sighs she thinks I don’t hear and that conversation with my dad when Mr. Sandler left the first time. She said she left her job and career for us, and that she didn’t feel like it was a choice. It was something she had to do. But … it doesn’t feel like any of the stuff she’s doing for us is making her all that happy most of the time. And now she’s basically just admitted it: We drag her down.