asked me yesterday? She asked if my mother would be comfortable at the country club… or if she’d feel out of place, like I’m some kind of charity case you’re including out of obligation.”
I absorbed that with a strange detachment. After three decades of single motherhood—double shifts and deferred dreams, scrimping and saving to provide dance lessons and SAT tutors and law school tuition—I was being discussed as an embarrassment to be tolerated.
“I see,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “And what did you tell Victoria?”
