You can’t just smooth over the past months with hot chocolate and candy canes, I want to add. But Mom holds up a hand before I can get there.

“Listen, Lou. I know I haven’t always made the right choices. Lord, I know that. But I thought I was doing what was best for you. You were skittish, even back then. No one but me could settle you. I thought it would be better if it was just the two of us.” She twists the lid of her hot chocolate.

Skittish. Jittery. Sensitive. Shy. Mom had so many words for me, except none of them were right.

“But you left home when you were pregnant. Was I ‘skittish’ before I was even born?”

She sighs again. I don’t care. That’s what happens when you’re finally allowed to ask questions after twelve years. It all comes out at once.

“That’s a whole other ball of wax. Me and my parents had a complicated relationship. I know what it’s like to grow up in that house. I didn’t want that for you.”

“At least we would have had a house.”

Mom jerks her rocker to a stop. “That’s enough now,” she says in her old voice. The bossy one. That’s better. No more fake politeness.

“You think it was an easy choice? I was basically a child myself. I want you to hear something.” She leans back in her chair and starts rocking again, like she’s settling in to tell me the truths of the universe. “People won’t give you an inch, so you’ve got to take a mile. I was taught to fight my way up in this world, and that’s what I wanted to teach you. You’re a fighter, Lou.”

That stupid word again.

“I have a sensory processing disorder. SPD.” I spit it out. She puts her feet down to stop her chair, and I consider running. She squints at me. Like I’m telling her a lie. Like it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo. And against everything I told myself before coming here, I find myself backpedaling. “That’s, um, what Andrea, the counselor at school, thinks, anyway.”

She starts shaking her head, and now I really want to run. I can’t do this with her. She makes me feel so small and wrong. But something makes me stay. Mom’s a force, but Well told me I was a force too. I’m not the same person I was two months ago, and Mom needs to hear what I have to say. There’s no way forward now but through.

“SP—” she starts.

The cup shakes in my hands, but my voice is steady when I speak.