She sighs. “I can’t do this with you,” she says, getting up from the table. “I know what you think of me, Cat, but I’m not heartless. I’m not glad she’s dead, you know. I just can’t pretend we had something we didn’t. However you felt about each other, it wasn’t like that with us. Ever.”

It is the word “ever” that keeps ringing through the air between us after she stops talking. It is the word that says the most. It means their relationship wasn’t just strained when she got older—when she was in high school or when she took off, when she had me or dumped me, or any of the points that would obviously lead to a breakdown in the relationship. It means it was strained long before that, when she was young, when it should have been easy for Moony to love her and easy for her to love Moony back. The way it was for Moony and me.

I don’t know what to do with all the questions and possibilities contained in that word. I don’t know where to begin unraveling the history they shared that I am not privy to. My mind is racing over plausible explanations. Could my mother have developed her mental illness early? The way some kids are diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia before they even turn thirteen? Was she just willful or stubborn or precocious or rebellious or any number of other traits that are used to describe difficult children? I can’t understand what would put a mother at odds with her daughter straight out of the womb. I can’t understand why she would use the word “ever.”

“Why?” My voice is small, frayed at the edges. Fringed in black like Mary’s burnt eggs.

She folds her arms over her chest like a blockade and shrugs. “Sometimes people are just different.”

“But she’s your mother.”

She looks away, her jaw set. “That isn’t always enough, Cat.”

Don’t I know it. “I’m so sick of all your secrets. She was your mother, and she loved you. And all you ever do is act like she barely existed, like she’s just a loose end you have to tie up now that she’s gone. But she took care of me when you wouldn’t. She did your job for you. She picked up the pieces you left behind.”

“Cat, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes, I do. Because I lived it. I was one of those pieces. I was in pieces. You did that. And she stepped in when she didn’t have to.” My voice is loud enough for the neighbors to hear by now, but I don’t care.