I didn't say anything. She was right.
"I'm going with her Monday," my mother said. "To the office. I called her in to my room after dinner and told her I'm going with her. I'm going to tell them myself. All of it." She pulled her robe tighter. "I don't know what happens. Maybe I have to pay it back. Maybe something worse. I don't know. I'm not going to lie to you and say I know."
"Okay," I said.
"I'm not going to lie to you anymore at all," she said. "I know that doesn't mean anything coming from me right now. I know it's just words. I'm saying it anyway, so you can check."
"Okay."
She looked out at the street. Somewhere a few blocks over, a dog barked, and Moxie, downstairs, woke up and answered it, once, and went back to sleep.
"What you heard," she said. "In the kitchen. About his face. About looking at you."
I waited.
"It's true," she said. "I'm not going to take it back. It's the truest thing I said all day. But it's not the whole thing, and I want you to have the whole thing." She was quiet for a moment. "When you were born, he cried so hard the nurse thought something was wrong with him. He held you in that chair by the window and he cried for twenty minutes. And I sat in the bed and watched the two of you and thought, I have never been this happy and I never will be again. And I was right. I wasn't." She wiped her face with the sleeve of her robe. "That's what I see, when I look at you. Not just the roof. The chair by the window. Both of them, all the time, at the same time. And I didn't know what to do with it, so I put you where I didn't have to look. I put you in the place where I keep him. That's not your fault. That's not anything you did. You could have been the best kid on earth. You were the best kid on earth. That's what made it worse."
I didn't know what to say to that. I still don't, really. I've thought about it a lot of nights since, and I still don't.
"Do you love her more than me?" I said. It came out small. I hated how small.