Chapter 87
Katie
By the time Ingrid and I arrived at the gala, it was nearly nine o’clock. Usually, I’d have been here all day, straightening
out clipboards at the silent auction table or double-checking the seating chart against each and every place card. But this
time, I wasn’t expected at all.
My mother—who was mid-conversation with a few donors—spotted me from across the room. For a moment, her mouth fell agape.
And then, just as quickly, a smirk stretched across her face. Something hot and wild flew through my bloodstream, but I exhaled
it away. She got back to her chitchat, and I scrunched my eyes closed.
Ingrid squeezed my hand. “For Mikey, okay?”
I squeezed back. “For Mikey.”
And for a little while, everything was fine. We drank fancy sparkling cider, put in a lowball offer for tickets to the ballet,
and then—while Ingrid went to find us more lukewarm coconut shrimp—I talked to a reporter who’d covered my brother’s team
at the Little League World Series. Mid-sentence, a hand cinched my shoulder.
“Oscar, if you’ll excuse us for a moment?”
The reporter nodded. I turned to my mother.
“Mom, I—”
She pulled me into the catering kitchen. Behind us, a server wiped clean clinking glassware. A sink ran, and through the back-of-house laughter, a radio blared.
“Where’s Tyler?” she said.
“Don’t do that, Mom. Please.”
“If you brought Ingrid to hurt me, that won’t work. She still sends me a card on Mikey’s birthday. She’s going to be a trauma
surgeon, you know. She’s—”
“Mom, stop. I brought Ingrid for me. I’m here for Mikey. This isn’t about Tyler, okay? And it’s not about our fight either.
Please don’t make this something it’s not.”
She smiled, and my insides turned cold. I wrapped my arms around my elbows as if that might protect me from the freeze.
“I warned you,” she said. “This is what that boy does. He takes and takes and takes, and then he leaves. Do you see that now?
That I was only trying to protect you? I was too late with Mikey. I should’ve seen it sooner. I should’ve been paying more
attention. But I couldn’t make that mistake again. This was for the better. Then, and now.”
That cater waiter glanced up from his side work, then looked away. I took a deep breath and straightened out my shoulders.
“Mom,” I said. “I love you.”
She startled. She took a half step back. I kept talking.
“I love you. I love you because you are my mother and because that’s the kind of person I am. And if you can’t love me back,
it’s okay. You can grieve. You can take all the time you need. I understand.”
The slightest tremble worked across her face. Here, in this kitchen, in these ball gowns, that decades-old radio at war with
a string quartet on the other side of those swinging double doors.
“Katie, I . . .”
This was when she was supposed to say I love you. This was when she was supposed to wrap her arms around me and say I’m sorry. But she didn’t. Instead, she stood there and looked at me. It was almost as though she wasn’t sure who I was, what I might
become, or how I had survived this.
I threw my arms around her. “You don’t have to love me,” I said. “I forgive you. What happened killed you, and I forgive you.
I’m going to be okay.”
She nodded into my shoulder. I held her for only a little while—ten, maybe twenty seconds. And then, when I was ready, I let
her go.