“You didn’t ask.”
She stopped.
I wasn’t raising my voice.
I wasn’t trying to humiliate her.
That made the words harder to say.
And, apparently, harder for her to hear.
After a moment, she whispered, “We thought you were doing administrative work.”
I looked at her.
“I’m an attorney, Mom.”
“I know that now.”
The sentence hurt more than any insult my father had delivered from the witness stand.
Because it was so ordinary.
I know that now.
After years of education.
Years of service.
Years of trying to share my life.
She knew now because a judge had read the information aloud in a room full of strangers.
Not because her daughter had told her.
Not because she’d cared enough to remember.
Because the truth had become impossible to ignore.
“Mom,” I said quietly, “you didn’t have to understand every part of my job. I never expected that.”
