“She was always a contrary one.” A gravelly voice rose up behind me. I turned to see Gramps kicking shells off the dock into the sea grass. “We’d say it’s time to go, she’d run straight back to the beach. After her mother passed, I was just outmatched. I’d tell her to study for her math test, she’d stay up all night playing the piano. I’d tell her to apply to a liberal arts program, she’d only apply to conservatories. I’d tell her ‘That man, however famous, is much too old for you. He’ll overpower you, your life will become his life.’ And she married him.”

I sat, letting my legs dangle. Gramps sat beside me, chucking bits of shell even farther. I looked over at him, his bald head, sunspots, wrinkles, and realized he was probably a few years younger than Dad. It had never occurred to me before.

“I’m glad she married Marty. For obvious reasons.” Gramps patted my hand. “And I like him! Still do. We email.” He shrugged. “But I’m not surprised your mom did what she did. I’m just shocked it took her so long.”

Something about the way he frowned after he said it made me feel like there was another thought he was holding back. So I went ahead and quietly voiced the suspicion I’d held for a very long time.

“Was she planning to leave Dad when she got pregnant with me?”

Gramps clicked his tongue. “She never said so. She did say she was thinking about touring more.”

We both knew what that meant.

“She doesn’t love me.” I rubbed my knees. “I’d always thought she did. She acted like she did.”

Even now, scenes were replaying in my head like a remake of a familiar movie. Me filling every page of a coloring book while she practiced the piano. The day she forgot to pick me up from school and my first-grade teacher had to take me to Lincoln Center in search of my dad. The day I found the courtyard. The party after the photo shoot, my disastrous attempt at a performance. All the hours I practiced from then on, timing them so they didn’t conflict with her hours but still overlapped, so she’d walk in and hear me and maybe even spark to me this time if I worked hard enough. The way she’d strained herself before that eighth-grade dance, visibly twisting herself into the shape of what she thought a normal mother should be. How much it had hurt to see her fake it.

Not to mention all those fuzzy memories—climbing on the Alice statue, someone there to catch me. Was it Mom? Did it even matter if all she’d wanted in that moment was to be free from me?