I don’t know. I have stopped trying to reconstruct the complete interior of what Elise knew or felt. I have what she told me, which is more than a lot of people give. That has to be enough.
## What My Mother Said at the Reception
I want to include this carefully because I don’t want to make it too neat, too much of a resolution that wraps the thing up cleanly. What actually happened at the reception was not a resolution. It was a moment, and moments are not resolutions.
My mother and I were sitting at a table toward the end of the evening, after the toasts and before the dancing got well established. She had a glass of wine in her hand. I had sparkling water. We were watching Elise and Noah on the dance floor, their first dance as a married couple to a song I didn’t recognize but which Elise clearly loved — she was mouthing the words.
My mother said, ‘She looks happy.’
‘She does,’ I said.
We watched the dance for a moment.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ my mother said.
‘I’m glad I’m here too,’ I said, which was true.
She turned to me slightly, not a full turn, not making a thing of it. ‘I have been trying to understand what I did,’ she said. ‘Not to explain it. Just to understand it.’
I waited.
‘I think I decided what you would feel before I asked,’ she said. ‘I’ve been doing that for a while. Not just with this.’