“I got no idea what you’re talking about,” my mama said, brow furrowed. “I never even met Izzy.”

I believed her only because she wouldn’t bother lying, not about something she’d consider as unimportant as bringing Matt into Izzy’s orbit. I palmed tears off my cheek with the flat of my hand. I glanced around the trailer with blurry eyes, half-finished beer cans littering the counters, a scrum of suspicious white powder smeared at the other end of the table, the thick, hot smell of rotting garbage, the blare of idiotic voices from the television in the corner. Something like horror swelled in my chest. “Did Junie come here? Did you bring her here?”

“You ashamed of growing up poor?” my mama asked. “Is that what this is about?”

“I’m still poor!” I screamed. “Junie was poor every day of her life. It’s never been about that. It’s about you.”

“If I was so terrible, if growing up here was so bad, you knew where the door was.” She jutted her chin toward the front of the trailer. “Never saw you use it, though. Always seemed happy enough to keep on eating my food, sleeping under my roof.”

I rolled my eyes, wishing Cal were here to catch my glance. “Oh, here we go.” I braced myself for the big windup, the unappreciated, picked-on mother whose kids were ungrateful brats. It was a version of the story my mama never got tired of telling. A self-serving fairy tale studded with lies.

“What do you want me to say then?” she asked. “You want me to apologize for seeing my own grandchild? My own flesh and blood?”

“No,” I said. “Your apologies don’t mean shit. We both know that. You’ve never been sorry for anything in your entire life. Except maybe giving birth to Cal and me.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, her mouth twisting into a cruel little bow. “I never was sorry about Cal.”

It was nothing she hadn’t said to me before, but it still had the power to hurt. Not a full body blow the way it had been when I was a kid, but a quick, sharp kick to the heart. “Don’t worry, Mama,” I said. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

She turned away from me, tossed her empty beer bottle into the trash. “I ain’t in the mood for this.” She sighed. “I wanted to meet Junie, that’s all. I meant for it to be a onetime thing. But then I got to know her.” She paused, shoulder falling in a helpless shrug, the gesture you make before you admit something shameful. “I loved her,” she said finally.

Nothing she could have said would have shocked me more. It was like hearing your dog start a conversation or watching the sun fall out of the sky. Something so impossible that even seeing it with your own eyes didn’t make it real. “You loved her,” I said, voice flat.

“I did,” my mama confirmed. She sounded as surprised as anyone by the fact.