“I guess I’ve always wondered what made my mom the way she is. Like, what was her original trigger?”

“Original trigger?” Daniel has moved on to the last pepper shaker at the last table. He uncaps it and holds his hand out. I pass him my funnel.

“People who suffer from mental illness, stuff like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, they sometimes have a trigger—an original trauma—that is responsible for causing their first episode or psychotic break. It’s usually something stressful. A major life change, like a death.”

“Or a birth?” he asks quietly.

“Exactly.” I see the image of the ghostly white baby in my mother’s arms again, so tiny and helpless and gone. “Most people have their first episode in their teens or early adulthood. This thing, this event, happens, and if they are susceptible to the disease, it pushes them over the edge.”

“So, you think your mom had one of these events and you didn’t know about it?” Daniel recaps the pepper shaker, and we walk our remaining supplies back to the kitchen.

Maybe more than one. “Well, something set it off. It’s not always enough just to have the genetic predisposition.”

He nods thoughtfully. “I get that.”

“But…”

“But?” he presses.

“My grandmother used to talk about my mom like she was always sick, even when she was a kid. She never mentioned anything my mom went through or might have experienced that could have triggered her. She never shared any memories of my mom before her episodes. She made it sound like that’s just who Mary was. Almost like it was to be expected.”

“And was it?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I guess that’s what I’m trying to find out. The research says it isn’t likely. But some people do get diagnosed as children. And for as long as I can remember, my mom has been sick. So if something did happen to her, it had to have happened before I came along. And maybe if there was a Mary before bipolar disorder, then there can be a Mary after.”

It sounds an awful lot like hope, but I don’t want to call it that. I don’t want to know her, I tell myself. I want to know about her. And there’s a difference. I want to see what makes her tick out of sync with the rest of the world. Like Moony’s watch, I want to peek at the gears. And then I want to peel back the layers of myself and see if the same thing exists inside of me—a cog out of place, a gear too many.