Quentin forgot about the voice recorder and talked. He tried to explain what it was like to grow up with a mother who never hugged him and only held his hand at the cemetery and seemed indifferent to his presence in her life. He told her about his many attempts to get Kate’s attention—first by getting good grades, then by getting bad ones. He talked about how strung out his mother had been, so wasted she often forgot to feed him or clean the house or make sure he got off to school okay. How even in rare periods of sobriety, she’d been completely disinterested in her own son, and how different that all might have been, were it not for April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy and what they had done to Kate’s family.

Through it all, Nicola ate her toast and sipped her coffee, nodding occasionally but saying nothing. When he was done, Nicola watched his face, her thin lips pulled tight, her bright eyes appraising. “Do you think this podcast is going to help you?” she said. “Is that why you’re doing it?”

“I don’t know.”

Nicola put the last piece of toast into her mouth and took her wallet out of her purse. “Maybe it’s just because I’m older,” she said. “But I feel like you young kids would be a lot healthier—a lot happier—if you spent less time wallowing in sorrow over things that are inevitable.”

“What does that mean?”

“Parents are human beings. Human beings screw things up. It’s inevitable. Your situation isn’t special or dire or even all that unusual.”

He swallowed hard. “Maybe I didn’t explain it properly.”

“You explained it fine,” she said. “But I’m guessing you’re no perfect prince either, and as far as you and your mother are concerned, it’s a wash at best.”

Quentin opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had no idea what to say to that.

“You want my advice?”

“I suppose?”

“Get over it. Your mother did the best she could. Be grateful to her that you made it into adulthood alive, instead of blaming her for all the troubles you’ve brought on yourself.”

“That’s . . . that’s kind of harsh, don’t you think?”

She tapped at Quentin’s facedown phone. “When you get a chance, play back that recording you thought you were being so sneaky about. Take a listen to how harsh you sounded talking about your dead mother. Then we can talk.”

Quentin stared at her. She dropped a twenty on the table and started to stand up. “This ought to cover me,” she said, and he found himself thinking about how much her voice reminded him of Renee’s—Renee on the Mother’s Day tape, honeyed and calm, telling her daughter how much she meant to her.

“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” he said.