Then she asked,
“You’re embarrassed.”
I hesitated.
“A little.”
It hurt saying it.
“I wanted tonight to go well.”
She looked at me in the mirror.
My mother has a particular expression when she’s deciding how much of something to explain.
Not what she wants to say.
She usually knows that immediately.
She decides how to say it.
Then she smiled.
Not the polite smile she had been wearing at dinner.
Her real smile.
The one that usually meant she knew something I didn’t.
She leaned closer.
“Elena, I didn’t
