"You awake?" he said through the door.
"Yes."
"I'm not going to come in."
"Okay."
He was quiet for a while.
"There's a thing you should ask your mother," he said finally. "About 2008. About that dress. I'm not going to tell it to you, because it isn't mine to tell. It's hers. But I think you ought to know it before you decide what you think about her. I think it might change some things. It might not. But you ought to have it."
"Why didn't anybody ever tell me before?"
"Because she didn't want you carrying it," Marcus said. "That was her reason. I'm not saying it was a good one." I heard him get up, his knees cracking. "She's in the kitchen. She's been down there since about eleven. I heard her go down."
I lay there for another hour after his footsteps went back to the couch. Then I got up.
My mother was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark with only the light on over the stove. She was in her bathrobe, the blue fleece one with the pocket torn, and she had the garment bag laid across the table in front of her, unzipped, the old dress spilling out of it, the lace gone gray-gold in the stove light.
I sat down across from her. The dress lay between us on the table like a third person.