Mom let out a shocked laugh. “For what? Giving my teenaged daughter freedom for once in her life? Most girls would kill for that chance. And if what I’m hearing from Winston is right, she’s taking full advantage. It’s even been in the New York gossip pages, didn’t she tell you?”

The sparkle had returned to her eye. It was a shield she was waving, lightness, breeziness, not a care in the world.

“Is he as brilliant as everybody’s saying?” She winked, she actually winked. “The next—?”

“Do you ever miss me?”

The room fell silent at my question. Around me, everyone held their breath—while I exhaled for what felt like the first time in a year.

“I do.” Mom stared at a knot in the floorboards. “But it hurts. So I think of other things.”

I let out a sharp laugh. “Oh my God.”

She glanced up, her eyes flaring right back. “It was a hard call. A brutal one. You or my career . . . one last chance at the life I’d always thought I would have. It ripped me apart.”

Victor, silent as ever, reached out to take her hand, running his thumb along it like she was the child here, vulnerable and wounded.

“You poor thing,” I said, unflinching. “That must have been so tough for you.”

“Okay.” Her eyes stayed on mine—but something behind them shut off like a switch. “You want honesty, Ruby? Here’s honesty. If you’re asking me if I would make that call again, the answer is yes.”

With that kill shot, Mom swiped her face dry and motioned to the stairwell with a nod. Victor stood, bowing politely to my grandparents as if this had been a totally normal meal.

“We need our rest,” Mom murmured behind her. “I’m playing Rach Three.”

And she walked up the stairs, away, away, away.

“Ruby.” Grandma Jean started crumpling in on herself.

I walked out the back door, still not crying—skirting the pool, tiptoeing down the long dock until I reached the end and stood staring at the moonlight contorting on the water, my bare toes inching off the edge.

I felt curiously empty. My whole life, I’d struggled to understand her, make allowances for her, reshape myself to fit her mold, no matter how many times she told me it was impossible. Now the final burden was gone. The last thing that I’d always believed made me me.

I didn’t care who I became, so long as it was anyone but her.