“I am your mother,” she said, and now there was an edge under the honey. “I carried you two. I gave birth to you. You don’t get to talk to me like that. I have every right to be at my own sons’ graduation, and no one” — her eyes cut to me — “no one is going to keep me from it.”
And that was the card. The one people like Tara always, eventually, reach for.
I have rights. I’m their mother. You can’t stop me.
Mason looked at me then. Just a glance, but I knew my son, and I knew what he was asking. He was asking whether it was true. Whether this woman could actually walk into their graduation, sit in the family section, get in the photos, insert herself into the single proudest day of our lives and claim a credit she had done nothing to earn — and whether there was anything we could do about it.
