“Stop overreacting, you’re ruining her day!” my mother hissed, grabbing my hair and pushing me over the balcony railing at my sister’s party. I blacked out. When I woke up, the upscale venue was surrounded by federal agents, and my mother was sobbing on her knees while my sister held a document and begged me…
brimming with an agonizing, naive hope. “Maybe she’ll like the apple pie we baked.”
I looked at my son, a boy with so much light in his heart that he couldn’t comprehend the darkness in hers. How could I crush that hope? I couldn’t. I was a mother who actually loved her child, unlike the women who held that title in my life and Patricia’s.
