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She says it like that explains everything and I give her atry againlook.

“Fine.” She huffs. “My parents never liked Lyle. Told me not to marry him. I did it anyway. Not sure I ever loved him, but I loved the idea of proving ’em wrong, you know?”

I make an agreeing sound. If my mother has taught me anything, it’s stubborn.

“Then he took that job on the road, gone all the time, drinking more when he came home. Angry as sin after that. I got lonely.” She shrugs. “If he was gone, I was goin’ too. Wasn’t gonna be strapped into a life neither of us wanted.” She doesn’t say it to be mean, it’s honest, and as much as I know the abrasiveness of that truth should hurt, it doesn’t. At least not as much as I would expect. My mom got married and stayed married to the wrong man for the wrong reasons; Zeb and I were collateral damage. “I knew he was gettin’ head at every truck stop from here to Tacoma sure asI was doing the same to any man who’d buy me a vodka and tonic and flirt with me over a game of pool.”

“Your inability to show up for a school function was because you were giving retaliatory blowjobs in the bathroom of the bar?” I ask dryly.

“God, Scotty Ann, for such a smart-ass you’re dumb as shit,” she snaps. “Do I have to spell it all out for you?”

“Apparently.”

“Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “People knew. Hell, everyone knew. That day at the playground when I told you not to call me mama?”

I pull my chin back, surprised she remembers.

“I heard one of the other moms talking about me. Calling me a whore. I was embarrassed. Not for me—for you. I didn’t act it, but I’m no idiot. You deserved better than me. Zeb did. Thought if nobody called me mama—if I pretended not to be one—I wasn’t. Convinced myself you’d be better off. Orphans.” Her lips press into a flat line that feels a little remorseful. “It’s easy to not show up when you think you’re doing everyone a favor.”

A cardinal lands in the brown grass and pecks at the ground; I wonder if it’s Zeb.

“When I was pregnant with you,” she continues, looking up at the sky as she exhales smoke, “I took Zeb to one of those play gyms at McDonalds. You remember those? With the ball pits?” I nod. “He was crawling around, too little to really do anything, I just needed to get out of the house. It was raining. Having kids makes you damn stir crazy. Anyway, a grandmother was there with her grandson. She noticed my belly. ‘What are you having?’sheasked.‘A girl,’I told her. She put a hand to her heart—just like this.” Glory spreads her bony fingers wide across her chest. “Then she said, ‘You’ll have a best friend for life.’And I cried right there in that play area at the thought of it. My best friend growing right inside my body. It wasn’t the life I wanted, but I thought I could change. Be better. Happier.”

For the first time in my life, I see tears in my mother’s eyes.

“Then I cared more about myself and getting even with your daddy than being your best friend. I’ve come to terms with it.” Another drag of her smoke, another shrug. “Probably why I’m so mean to you. You have a business and a house—a whole damn life I’m not part of, and that’s on me. It’s easy to be mean when being nice stings like a bee’s ass in your eye after things don’t work out.”

I snort a laugh. She’s not wrong.

“Why didn’t you try to find me when everything happened with Zeb?”

She laughs, it’s unamused.

“You ever make a mistake you didn’t want to fess up to?”

I hum in agreement, thinking of Ford and what I did.

“How you think it feels to tell someone their brother is dead because they were a piss-poor excuse for a mother?”

I look at her. Exactly the same as she always is but different. Human. The whole narrative of my life shifts slightly.Again. Glory, in her own twisted way, did her best, even though it sucked. Just like I can’t escape the pile of shit I was born into, neither could she. And she pushed us away because of it. Like I’ve spent my whole life doing to anyone who tries to get close.

I swallow through the thickness in my throat as a car drives down the lane of the trailer park and Glory waves.

“And your parents?” I ask. “You married my dad and just, what, never talked to them again?” We never discussed them; she said they were worthless, and the context clues of my life never led me to believe otherwise. Never encouraged me to ask anything about them. Knowing they didn’t like my dad is no surprise. Nobody did.

She stills, taking a long look at me. The kind of look like she’s trying to see something or say something without doing either. Abruptly, she stands, goes inside, and returns with a stack of photos I’ve never seen before held together by a rubber band.

“When you get as good at lying to yourself as I am, it’s easy to lie to everyone else.” The ease of the words is at odds with the significance of them. “So I did. Starting with my maiden name.” My jaw drops. “Told you it was Joplin because I always liked Janis Joplin.”

I don’t mask an ounce of my shock. “Youwhat?”

She shrugs. “My parents hated Lyle from the second they met him. Said he was worthless. He wasn’t at first—least it didn’t seem that way. The more I saw they were right, more mad I got. More stubborn. More distance I put between them and me. They didn’t control me—nobody did. You know how kids are. Either way”—she lifts her chin, eyes on the sky—“I did what I wanted. They met you once, when you were a baby. Lyle berated me to hell and back in front of them and they begged me to leave him—especially my daddy—but I refused. Never talked to themagain. They weren’t bad, there just wasn’t space for them and my pride. I’d be damned if I was licking my wounds in front of them.”

I’m speechless; she hands me the stack of faded pictures. On the first page, every bit of remaining air is squeezed out of my lungs. There, a smiling couple stands holding a faceless baby at the lake . . . in front of an A-frame.MyA-frame.

The world stops spinning.

“Archie and Lydia?” I whisper.