My mother was quiet for a moment. Then she said, quietly, “I didn’t want it to sound like we’d failed her.”
“You can’t fix how it sounds by changing what you say happened,” I said.
I hadn’t planned to say it that way. It came out that way and it was accurate, so I let it stand.
Ethan said, “I want to say something to Nora.” He looked at me. “I accepted the easy explanation. I knew you’d worked hard — I always knew that — but I accepted the version that made it seem like that was what you’d wanted. I didn’t ask questions because I didn’t need to. That wasn’t okay.”
“I know you didn’t know about the allocation specifically,” I said.
“I know I didn’t know,” he said. “But I also didn’t ask. And now I’m getting married and I’m only just understanding what it actually cost you to get where you are.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
It was specific enough to mean something. Not total. Not a resolution of fourteen years in one sentence. But specific enough.
My mother said, eventually, “We’ll talk to the family. About the scholarship story.”
I said, “I’d like that.”
She said, “It’s going to be an uncomfortable conversation.”
I said, “I had an uncomfortable six years.”
She flinched. I hadn’t said it to wound her — I said it because it was true and because I was tired, finally, of the version where the uncomfortable part was only the conversation.
My father said, “We’ll do it.”