For one absurd moment, I thought of the cream blazer again. How carefully she must have chosen it. How proud she had expected to feel today.
“Hello, Mom,” I said.
She walked forward a few steps, then stopped. Her eyes searched my face as if trying to reconcile the woman before her with the daughter she had filed away in a simpler category.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
It was the wrong beginning.
I felt Derek tense beside me.
“You didn’t know I was speaking?” I asked.
“No. I mean…” She looked toward my father. He said nothing. “I didn’t know it had become so big. Your company.”
My company.
Not my work. Not my life.
“I see,” I said.
Her face flushed. “That came out wrong.”
“A lot of things did.”
My father cleared his throat.
“Sarah, your speech was impressive.”
Impressive.
The kind of word someone uses for a well-organized garage.
