Today was my birthday.
I felt better this morning. I’d been small for the rest of the day yesterday, but I was glad I came home with Justin.
He’d made dinner after picking up Chelsea, served me a plate, put me in bed, and I watched TV while he worked at his desk by the window with noise-canceling headphones on. I lay there and I mostly watched him instead of the show. It was grounding. It calmed me having him nearby. I felt my edges unravel again, the gradual untightening until I was almost back to normal.
It wasn’t lost on me that Maddy pushed me to go with him instead of staying with her.
She would never let someone else take care of me unless she was sure they could do it. And he could. I hated that he had to, but he could.
Mom couldn’t. She never had. It was very much the other way around and that had never been more clear to me than now.
Neil had to know by now what she’d done. Was I going to get a call to pick her up? Would she be standing on the curb with her bags, no money and nowhere to go? Or worse, would the call come from the police station when Neil reported the missing things she took?
I hated that this was what I got to think about today.
It’s funny because I realized Maddy was right. Mom would forget it was my birthday. The only call I’d get this morning would be one where she needed something.
And Maddy was right about something else too—I did care more about Amber than I cared about myself. I needed to think about that. I had to
unpack this situation with my mother. I didn’t like the way I was living or the responsibility I’d assumed for her.
I wanted to block her. Even just for today. But this went against everything I’d spent my life doing.
All I ever did was wait for Amber. Sitting around hoping she’d come home or the phone would ring. But the calls were never good. They hardly ever brought me any sort of happiness—in fact, they usually did the opposite.
If I blocked her, it would feel like clocking out of a job that I’d been at with no breaks for the last twenty years. If I did it, it would not only keep her from calling, it would keep me from knowing if she didn’t—and both things would protect my peace. And I hadn’t felt peace in a really, really long time. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave her in the world with no one.
Even if she could do that to me.
So I settled for turning off my ringer instead and I got up to go find Justin.
I came downstairs still in my pajamas, following the smell of bacon, glad I was actually in the right headspace to eat with everyone. When the stair creaked as I made my way to the kitchen, Sarah poked her head out the door and saw me coming. “She’s here!” She darted back the way she came.
I turned the corner just as Justin was lighting the candles on a stack of pancakes. Alex and Sarah flanked him on either side.
“Happy birfday!” Chelsea said. She ran and hugged my legs.
I hugged her back and beamed at the setup. He’d made me confetti pancakes. There was a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner hanging from the light fixture and a present wrapped in colorful paper with a gold bow sitting in the middle of the table.
I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect anything unless it was Maddy. He pulled my chair out. “For the birthday girl.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “Thank you.”
I sat and he pushed my chair in and kissed the side of my head.
“All right, ready?” he said, rubbing his hands together. “One, two…”
They burst into the “Happy Birthday” song. Alex started belting it like an opera singer. Sarah glared at him, and Chelsea descended into giggles. Justin laughed through the last half and when it ended, I blew out the
candles. Everyone cheered.
Justin set a Starbucks napkin next to my plate and sat next to me. “I hope you like what I got you.”
“Do you want me to open it now?”
“Presents!” Chelsea said, bouncing a little. “Open it! Open it!” Alex chanted.
Sarah looked annoyed at her siblings’ enthusiasm, but by the way she was waiting, I could tell she wanted to see what it was.
“Okay.” I pulled the box into my lap. “Maddy helped me with it,” Justin said. “She did?”
“Yup.”
I pulled the ribbon off and tore the paper. When I opened the lid, I had to dig through tissue to find it and when I did, I gasped. It was Stuffie.
He’d been cleaned and his eye sewn back on. His fur was brushed out and white again. His stuffing had been replaced, and he had a new mane. He looked like he used to.
I turned him around gently in my hands. “How…?” “Maddy snuck it out for me. Faith did it,” he said.
I brushed my fingers across the clean, soft fur on Stuffie’s head, tears welling in my eyes.
He nodded at it. “She took a little of his old stuffing and put it in a fabric heart and put it back in his chest with his new filling.”
I held the doll against me and looked over at him. “Thank you so much,” I breathed.
He smiled and leaned in and kissed me. Alex hooted and Sarah moaned about it being gross, and Justin and I grinned against each other’s lips.
Justin pulled the candles out of my breakfast and served me some bacon.
Alex grabbed a pancake and rolled it like a burrito and took a bite. “I gotta go to school,” he said, chewing with his mouth open. “Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.” I smiled.
“Happy birthday,” Sarah said, following him out.
Justin set a cut-up pancake in front of Chelsea and poured syrup over it and sat next to me.
“This is so sweet, Justin. Thank you.”
He watched me take a bite of my breakfast. “Like it?”
I nodded, looking at the plate. “Why are you so good to me?” I whispered.
“Because you deserve it.” “No I don’t.”
“Yes,” he said. “You do. You take care of everyone in this house. You do driving hours with Alex and you help Sarah with homework and you give Chelsea baths. You read her stories and you do laundry and you help in my never-ending quest to keep all the dishes out of my brother’s room.”
I laughed a little but his face went serious. “You deserve to be appreciated, Emma.”
“I think I’m just used to feeling like I’m asking too much when I need something. Unless it’s Maddy. My mom—”
“You’re not asking too much,” he said. “You were just asking the wrong person. Ask me instead.”
I peered at him, my eyes soft.
He kissed me again and I smiled after him as he got up to pour himself some coffee.
I did feel appreciated here. I liked being a part of this family. I liked Sarah’s Snaps and the funny sarcastic texts she’d started to send me during the day. I liked that Chelsea seemed to need me, that she found me comforting for some reason, like maybe I was the kind of adult I’d needed once and I was making a difference for her while she was missing her mom. I liked Alex’s Golden Retriever personality and how he was always happy, no matter what was going on. But most of all I liked that Justin was the leader of this band. A warm, capable patriarch who didn’t realize how strong and incredible he was.
They were all very lucky to have him.
I was lucky to have him.
At noon Maddy showed up to take me to lunch.
“Happy birthday,” she said, coming in the door sideways with an enormous gift bag while Brad yipped and jumped at her feet.
I shut the door behind her as Justin jogged down the stairs. “Hey.” “Hey,” she said, handing me the empty bag. “For you.”
I laughed. This was our tradition. She never got me anything other than a gift card because it wouldn’t fit in my luggage. She always got me a
certificate for a service or a restaurant and put it in the largest possible box or bag she could find. One year she used a refrigerator box she got behind a Best Buy.
We went to sit in the kitchen. Justin poured us iced teas and then took the seat next to me.
“So have you heard the Amber and Neil update?” Maddy asked, taking off her sweater.
I shook my head. “No.” Justin glanced at me. “What happened?” I asked. “They broke up.” “What?”
She nodded. “Yup.”
“How do you know?” Justin asked.
“Maria told me. I called to check in this morning. She said Neil came home yesterday and Maria told him everything that happened. Saw the video footage of the whole thing, and he still didn’t kick her out. I guess he had this come-to-Jesus with her, told her he’d help her and pay for whatever program she needed, and Amber got all pissed and said no. Then he told her if she wasn’t gonna get treatment, she couldn’t stay.”
I sat back in my chair, defeat washing over me. I don’t know why it surprised me. It didn’t really.
I shook my head. “She doesn’t have to pay rent, she doesn’t have to work,” I said. “He offered to take care of everything. I don’t get it. It’ll never be this easy again for her to get help.”
“You can’t help someone unless they want to be helped,” Justin said. “Neil told her she has a week to find someplace to go,” Maddy said.
“He’s going to put a down payment on an apartment for her if she wants. Maria’s like, super fucking happy.”
I grabbed a Wendy’s napkin off the table and folded it in half and then folded it in half again.
I already knew what came next. She would vanish.
I squeezed my eyes shut and put my forehead into my hand. The roller coaster was never ending.
A part of me was relieved she was going to leave. The other part was
scared for what would happen when she was gone. Because how long could she live like this? How long until her options ran out and she was too old to bounce from man to man and job to job? What would happen to her if she got injured or came down with a chronic illness or the games she used to manipulate people stopped working?
She would fall into my lap.
My whole life I was waiting for her to come back for me. And when she finally did, it wouldn’t be for me at all. It would be for lack of other options. It would be for her.
She wouldn’t try therapy. She wouldn’t accept help even when it was paid for in full and being handed to her on a plate.
Resentment bloomed in my chest. I don’t think it had ever been so clear to me before that Mom was responsible for her own circumstances. I always gave her an out. I always argued in her favor. She had bad credit, she had no support, no money, no help.
Only this time she did. And she didn’t want it.
“Did you ever get the results of the DNA test?” Maddy asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I said glumly.
“You did? What did it say?”
I sniffed and sat back again. “I’m Irish and German. A little of a lot of things.”
“And relatives?”
“I didn’t look,” I said.
“Do you want to look?” she asked. Justin peered at me.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Maddy leaned in. “It’s your birthday. I’d say today is a great day to let people know you exist.”
“Mom always told me I wouldn’t be wanted,” I said. “Oh yeah?” Maddy said. “She also lies a lot.”
I let out a dry laugh. Then I looked at Justin. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a big decision,” he said. “You can’t undo it once you look.
It’s possible that it might cause problems for someone.” I sensed a but. “But?”
“But it’s been twenty-nine years—almost thirty really, if you count the
nine months she was pregnant. Chances are if she’d been seeing a guy who was married, they could be divorced, or one of them or both of them are dead. It’s an old transgression. It happened a lifetime ago.”
“But Mom said he didn’t want kids.”
“You’re not a kid,” Justin said. “You don’t need raising. You don’t need money. I think a lot of people who don’t want kids don’t want the responsibility. You’re not a responsibility at this point.”
I bobbed my head. “True.”
“I think it would be worth looking to see if you have any siblings or cousins. To find out where you came from,” he said. “I can’t imagine not knowing who my dad was. Plus the health history is important. What if there’s something that runs in the family that you should know about?”
I looked at Maddy. She nodded.
Any other day I probably wouldn’t have had the courage. If I wasn’t so exhausted from Mom’s breakdown, I might have had more mental headspace to overthink it and chicken out. But today I didn’t.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll do it.” Maddy clapped her hands.
“Let’s use my computer,” Justin said. “The monitor’s big enough for us all to see it.”
“Good idea,” Maddy said, getting up.
We went upstairs to Justin’s room and pulled up the website and logged in. First I showed them my ancestry. Then I poked around and found the tab we’d come for. The one that said, “Participate to Find Relatives.”
I hovered my finger over it for a long moment. Then I clicked it and the page started to load.
I thought the results would be more instant. Most pages don’t take longer than a second to come up, but this one loaded for almost five minutes. Some colossal feat taking place on the other end.
My anxiety started to gnaw at me.
The extra time to think was making me second-guess my decision. I was about to make a joke about the website not being able to find any relatives for me when the page finished and the results finally popped up. My eyes landed instantly on two words, clear and in bold.
Amber Grant.
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “She ran her DNA.”
That was weird. She always told me she didn’t know our ethnicity.
I looked at the next match. A little round purple icon with the initials DG, and next to it: Daniel Grant.
And under it: Half Brother, on your mother’s side.
Maddy and Justin leaned in, reading it at the same time I did over my shoulder.
A half brother. On my mother’s side?
“How would I have a brother on my mom’s side?” I said, blinking at the screen. “She never had another baby.”
I tapped on his name and his birth year came up. My stomach twisted. “How old is Amber?” Justin asked.
“Forty-seven.”
“According to the year he was born, she was only fifteen,” Justin said. “Okay,” I said, licking my lips. “Okay, so she had a baby she gave up.” “But why didn’t she ever tell you?” Maddy asked.
“Maybe it was painful and she didn’t want to remember it? Maybe it was a closed adoption?” I said.
Maddy shook her head. “Then why does he have your last name though?
I mean, that’s weird, right?”
“Maybe a family member adopted him,” Justin said.
I shook my head. “I don’t have any family. Amber’s an only child and my grandparents died young. She didn’t have cousins, no aunts and uncles, nothing.”
I clicked out of Daniel’s profile and like the website was replying to what I just said, a list of names lined up under Daniel’s.
Justine Copeland.
Aunt, on your mother’s side.
Andrea Beaudry.
Aunt, on your mother’s side.
Liz Beaudry.
1st cousin, on your mother’s side.
Josh Copeland.
1st cousin, on your mother’s side.
With every name, my heart pounded harder. “What is happening?” I breathed.
Maddy looked at me and I could see it in her eyes.
“I’m going to message him,” I said, clicking back on Daniel.
I started typing, but before I even hit send, a message from Daniel came through first. Four words that I felt my brain commit to memory forever.
Your mom is Amber?
My hands were shaking when I typed in “Yes.”
His next message said “please call me” and there was a number. “He wants me to call him,” I said, looking up at Justin and Maddy. Maddy gestured wildly to my phone. “Then call him!”
My heart was pounding in my ears. I didn’t want to call him because I was suddenly extremely scared of what he was going to say.
“Emma. Call,” Maddy said.
I looked at Justin. He was chewing on the side of his thumb. He gave me a small nod. I dialed.
“Hello?” a male voice said on the other line. “Hi,” I said. “I’m… it’s Emma.”
“I can’t believe this,” the man said. “I’m… I’m speechless. You’re my sister,” he said, almost in wonder. “Do you have any siblings? Are there more?”
“No, just me.”
“Did you just find out who your mom was? Who adopted you?” he asked.
I shook my head like he could see me. “Nobody. Amber raised me.”
There was a long pause. “She raised you,” he said, like he didn’t believe
it.
“Yes. Who raised you?” I asked.
“My grandparents. She never mentioned you. Not one word—” “Wait. You’ve talked to her?”
“Of course I’ve talked to her. She came down a couple times a year.” I’d never felt the blood drain from my face before. But I did now.
“What do you mean she…” I swallowed. “Did you say your grandparents raised you? On your dad’s side?”
“No, Amber’s parents. She had me when she was fifteen and left three years later.”
“But… she said her parents were dead by the time I was born. They couldn’t have raised you,” I said.
The silence that followed felt like sap, it was so thick.
“Our grandparents died when I was twenty-three,” Daniel said. “Eight years ago.”
My breathing started to get labored. Justin’s hand came down on my shoulder and squeezed.
Alive. They were alive until eight years ago… My grandparents had been alive until I was in my twenties.
It was all happening too fast. I couldn’t process everything I was hearing. But one word kept repeating in my brain.
Lies. She’d been telling me lies. So many. Too many to count.
I had a brother. A brother she saw, a brother she talked to. Parents she’d visited. Sisters. Nieces and nephews. And she’d hidden them from me.
She’d hidden me from them…
“I see Justine, Andrea, Liz, and Josh. Is there anyone else in our family?” I asked, almost hoping the answer was no. That the deception stopped here and there was nothing else. But there was.
“Tons,” Daniel said. “Aunt Justine’s got seven kids and a bunch of grandkids, Aunt Andrea’s got five. Our cousin Liz lives down the street. I have a daughter, Victoria. She’s two.”
I sat there while he listed off family I wasn’t supposed to have. My mother’s nieces and nephews, sisters she had told me didn’t exist.
I felt shell-shocked. Like I was floating outside my body, looking down on myself.
Maddy nodded at the phone. “Where does he live?” she whispered.
I cleared my throat. “Where do you live?” I asked, my voice small. “Minnesota. Wakan.”
I repeated his words out loud. “Two hours away,” Justin said.
“I’m in Minnesota too,” I told Daniel. “I’m in Minneapolis.” “Can we meet?” he asked.
“When?”
“As soon as you can. I could even do today.”
I moved the phone away from my mouth. “He wants to meet me.
Today.”
Maddy was already getting up.
“Can I bring my boyfriend and my best friend?” I asked. “Of course. I’ll have my wife, Alexis, with me.”
We exchanged information, and half an hour later we were on our way. I felt like I was in some weird fever dream.
On the car ride down, I tried to repeat everything Daniel had said. My mind kept folding around this new information, and I grappled for any explanation to justify why she’d do this. Maybe they were horrible people. Maybe my grandparents were abusive. Maybe she was trying to protect me, and that’s why she never told me.
As awful as it sounded, I wanted this to be true. But if it was true, if they were bad people, why leave Daniel there? Why visit them?
I couldn’t think my way out of it.
Justin drove in silence most of the way, and Maddy didn’t urge me to talk. Like they both knew I was overwhelmed and if they pushed me I’d get small.
My survival instinct wanted me to run. It wanted me to shrink and withdraw and never talk about this again. But something told me I needed to find out the truth.
 |
The town we arrived in was picturesque. There were redbrick buildings with hanging flower baskets on the lampposts and ice cream and fudge shops on the main street and signs in the windows of the cafe and the
family-run grocery store for a pumpkin-carving contest in October. All I could think was, this didn’t look like a bad place to grow up. This didn’t look like a place I needed saving from.
We pulled up to an old green Victorian with a wraparound porch decorated with pots of mums.
Justin put the car in park, and I stared out the windshield at the house. “So this is where Daniel grew up?” Maddy asked. She was thinking the
same thing I was, that this place didn’t look like something to hide.
We got out of the car, and a man and woman came out the front door. She had shoulder-length red hair and was holding a baby. I knew my brother on sight because he looked exactly like me. He looked like our mother.
We both paused, staring at each other in disbelief. Like neither of us believed this could be real.
His wife must have sensed his paralysis because she stepped in. “Emma, I’m Alexis, Daniel’s wife. This is our daughter, Victoria. Your niece.”
The word “niece” made a lump bolt to my throat.
Maddy stepped around me. “I’m Maddy, and this is Justin.”
Justin blinked at Alexis. “I know you. You’re Briana’s friend.” Alexis seemed to remember him as soon as he said it. “Yes. It’s good to see you again.”
Daniel and I just stared at each other. Like we were looking at a strange mirror. Even with different fathers it didn’t matter. We were both offshoots of Amber.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I’m…”
Daniel snapped out of his daze. “Let’s go inside. We can talk in there.”
We came into the house and I peered around. I’d never been there, but there was something familiar about it anyway. Like maybe I’d seen bits and pieces of it through Mom, even though I didn’t know what I’d been seeing.
Roses.
The house was full of roses. My brother had them tattooed on his arms. The stained-glass window on the landing was framed in red roses. A little girl in a pink dress took up the center of the design, holding a dragonfly on her palm. Roses were carved into the banister.
This is where Mom got the idea for her mural at Neil’s.
“This is the family house,” Daniel said. “It goes back six generations.
Our great-great-great-grandfather built it. Our grandparents left it to Amber, actually.”
My head whipped to look at him. “Her parents left her a house?”
“Yeah. I ran it as a B and B for her for almost six years. I bought it from her three years ago.”
“You bought it from her,” I deadpanned. She’d had property? “How much did you buy it for?” I asked.
“Five hundred thousand.”
I blanched. “A half a million dollars…” I breathed.
I looked over at Maddy, and she was having a whole conversation with me in total silence. Beth and Janet had paid for my nursing school. They never got a dime from Amber.
This information saturated me. Soaked into my core.
And was this why I’d barely heard from her these last three years?
Because she didn’t need money?
Where was the money now? Was it gone?
But of course it was gone. That’s why she’d come looking for me. That’s why she’d latched on to Neil.
That’s why she was stealing his watches and cuff links.
I felt dizzy. I had to grip the banister to keep from swaying. Justin sensed it and he came up behind me and put a gentle hand under my elbow. I was going to be sick.
I was about to ask for a bathroom when a man burst through the front door. He stopped in the foyer and stared at me. “Holy fucking shit…” He put his hands on his head. “Holy shi—She looks just like her. It’s like Amber, twenty years ago.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “This is Doug, my best friend.”
“Fuck, sorry,” Doug said. He put out a hand and I limply shook it. He introduced himself to Justin and then Maddy.
Alexis was watching me. Then she turned to Doug. “Doug, I think we should catch up later. This is probably pretty overwhelming for everyone.”
“Shit, right,” he said. “Yeah. Call me. Call me the second you want me to come back over.”
He backed out the door, looking at me like I was a ghost.
I blinked around the house. There were black-and-white photos on the walls. The people had my face. My eyes. My nose.
“Is that her?” I asked. Daniel nodded.
There was a picture of Amber at the base of the staircase. I’d never seen a photo of her as a kid. I only knew it was her because she looked like me. She’d been twelve, maybe thirteen. She was sitting on the back of an old pickup truck with a bunch of other kids at a drive-in. She was smiling the way she did when she was okay.
“What would she do when she came here?” I asked, turning back to my brother.
Daniel shook his head. “Give Grandpa grief? Get money out of Grandma? Go on a bender? It was never good when she came.”
“Do you have pictures of your grandparents?” I asked. “Our grandparents,” I corrected.
“Yeah, lots. Come on.”
We moved into a living room and he sat me on a sofa. Maddy and Justin took the two chairs, Alexis sat next to Daniel as he set a photo album on the coffee table.
He opened the cover. “This is William and Linda.”
He flipped through to show me pictures of two people with kind eyes.
An old man, manning a barbeque with a GRILL MASTER apron on. A middle-aged woman, holding a little boy no older than Chelsea. The boy was laughing and she was hugging him on her lap. Daniel.
Pictures of the two of them standing next to an eighteen-year-old Daniel
at his high school graduation. Birthday parties and Daniel blowing out candles. Homemade Halloween costumes and William at some bar calling a Bingo game. Linda holding up a pie she made at Christmas with a Christmas tree behind her here, in this living room.
They seemed warm. Friendly.
I swallowed. “Did you have a good childhood?” I asked. “Yeah,” Daniel said. “It was a great childhood.”
“Were they good people?”
I saw him study me. “They were the best people I’ve ever known.” We sat there in silence.
“Was your childhood good?” he asked. It took me a long time to answer. “No.”
I stared at the album. The picture on the page was kids. A lawn full of
kids, playing in the sprinklers. My cousins. My brother.
I had been robbed. This life, this family, had been stolen from me. This was my alternate universe, laid out in full color.
And then Daniel flipped to another page and there was a picture of a twentysomething Amber. Sitting in a lawn chair drinking one of her Bloody Marys.
She’d been here. But where was I?
“What year is this?” I asked. But I think inside I already knew.
Daniel turned the page and the date was scrapbooked onto the bottom. The Fourth of July when I was eight.
Bile rose in my throat. The summer of the smoke alarm and the carrots.
The first time I went into the system.
She’d left me alone and come here. She left me to starve and fend for myself while she came back to her secret family to eat burgers and pretend I didn’t exist. It was the last thing I needed to see.
I got up. “I need to leave.”
Daniel got up too. “Are you sure? I was—”
But I was already running for the foyer, a panic attack building. I had to get out of here.
I heard Maddy making excuses for me, and Justin came out on my heels, clicking the car locks off a second before I got to the door.
By the time Maddy got into the back seat I was sobbing. Maddy leaned into the front. “Are you okay—”
“GO! GET ME OUT OF HERE!” I shouted.
Justin put the car in reverse and I watched through water-blurred eyes as my brother and his wife stood on the porch, shrinking in the distance as we backed out of the driveway.
I was breathing into my hands, trying not to hyperventilate. “That fucking bitch,” Maddy said from the back seat.
“Why the hell would she do this?” Justin asked, turning on the wipers. Dragonflies were all around the car. It was like a sudden swarm of locusts through the blur of my tears.
Maddy handed me tissues from her purse over the back of the seat. “Because she’s a horrible human being.”
“They seemed like nice people,” Justin said. “I don’t get it.” “They are nice people,” Maddy said.
I couldn’t stop crying. I had never in my life cried like this. I felt like my soul was leaving my body.
How could she have done this? How could anyone be this selfish? This cruel? And it wasn’t just the people she kept me from, or the betrayal of knowing where she was when I was left behind. It was the depth of the deception. The layers upon layers of lies she told to keep me from ever knowing this existed.
If Amber could do this, what else was she capable of?
“I can’t see,” Justin said. “I have to pull over, there’s too many bugs.” I felt the car drive onto the dirt.
“I can’t breathe,” I cried. “I can’t breathe!”
As soon as Justin put the car in park he was unbuckling himself and getting out to come around to the passenger side. Then he opened my door and lifted me into his arms. “Breathe with me, okay?” he whispered. “In and out. Slow.”
He held me there on the shoulder of the highway while I sobbed into his neck. He held me so tight, it felt like he was the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
“Tell me what I can do,” he whispered. “You can take me to her.”
Maddy had been right all along. She’d always seen Amber for what she was: someone who destroyed everyone and everything in her path.
My childhood shifted forever in my mind.
My mother’s neglect wasn’t the product of mental illness, or lack of resources, or circumstances beyond her control, the inability to do better. My life was chosen for me.
It was chosen by her.
