My father’s gray-flecked bushy eyebrows rise, and he sighs heavily, sitting back in the worn booth. “Not much. Your grandmother died when she was young. Eighteen or so, I think? So she was gone by the time your mom and I met.” He looks out the window, eyes going distant. “I could tell her mother’s death weighed heavy on her, you know? Real heavy.”

That surprises me. I knew the facts about my grandmother: she did hair in a salon in Texas, where my mother was raised. She didn’t have any siblings herself. She died from cancer. I knew about the woman, but I rarely saw my own mother’s pain from losing her. “She never said anything.”

He smirks as he reaches for the Texas Pete. “It didn’t come out like that. Came out in how she raised you.” He chuckles, tapping the Texas Pete bottle until it half empties onto his hashbrowns. “I didn’t notice it at first, but she had these nerves that started up when you were, what, ten? Eleven? You’d do a sloppy job cleaning your room or forget to take out the trash—didn’t matter, what it was, she just got on you for it. You remember.”

“That’s just… parents, though?”

He shrugs. “Black parents been pushin’ their kids hard for decades. My parents did it. I know your grandmother did it too, but your mom took it to another level. She tried to control it around you, but in private?” He whistled. “Anxious, rattled. Sometimes even straight-up scared. Had nightmares about you getting hurt or kidnapped. A few years ago it started taking longer and longer for her to calm down. One week when you were thirteen, you left the milk out on the counter overnight, remember that? It took three days for her to let it go. That’s when I finally told her, I said, ‘Faye, she’s a kid! She’s gonna mess up!’ She’d say she just wanted to get you ready, make sure you could handle yourself if we weren’t around.”

My chest tightens. Did she know?

My father reads my expression. “I think she was scared she’d leave you early, just like her mom left her.” He inhales sharply and draws his shoulders back, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing.

That she was right.

My hands wipe at the tears traveling in quiet streams down my cheeks. She knew what this is like.

He stares out the window, voice heavy with grief and regret. “We weren’t raised with therapy and all that. Not somethin’ Black folks did or talked about. If you said anything, you got sent to the church—” He sighs, shaking his head. “Anyway, when you applied to Carolina, it was like the dam she had inside… just broke. And all of it, every fight, every worry, came out on you.”

“Because she never wanted me to come here.”