Michael continues. “She came to me, asked me to lunch. I didn’t know what she wanted to talk about, but she came to me for help. Wondering if I could talk to you, if I knew what she could possibly do to help you, to get you back on a good path. Because that’s what you do when you love someone, Neil—if you see them going down the wrong path, you do whatever it takes to get them off that path.”

I wait for him to finish.

“I suggested Steerfield. I knew that it was a good school, one of the best boarding schools in the country, and I told her it might help you. You already knew Josh, sort of, so you would have a friend. I thought it would help.”

“Why didn’t you say anything to me about it?”

“Because I knew you’d be pissed,” he says. “You don’t know what she’s been through. She tried her best to be a good mom to the both of us. She did what she could.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw what she did for us, things that you didn’t see. I saw her fighting to be the good parent; I saw her desperate for our affection, to be better than Dad ever was. I saw her trying.” He takes a breath. “And if you want to compare them, she was definitely the better of the two.”

I watch Michael moving, his body language so rigid, his hands making tight fists. I want this to not have changed anything. I want Mom to still have been in the wrong, to be the villain of this story, the bad guy who is defeated at the end.

But that’s not the truth.

I was the bad guy.

Okay, the reality is probably something closer to none of us being a villain or a hero. We were just people doing their best, the best with what we had.

We still are.

I don’t like it.

“I know that you don’t want to talk to her, but you need to talk to her.”

I don’t say anything. I just let Michael walk toward me. He puts a hand on my shoulder, his touch warm.

“For yourself, and for her.”

I nod slowly, and Michael’s hand disappears. I hear the door open behind me, and close. Suddenly, I’m alone with my feelings, with new knowledge about my mother, this person who I’ve spent most of my life resenting, angry at because I thought she shipped me away without a second thought, because I thought she threw money at me because it was the simplest way for her to parent.

But maybe there was more to it. I have to admit that.