I stare at him, uncomprehending.

"You're lying."

"You think I would lie about something like this?"

"What do you mean she begged you not to pay? That doesn't make any sense. She wanted to get better. My mother did not want to leave me."

There's this outrage building inside me that I don't know what to do with.

"She did not want to die," I tell him, the words feeling like they are wrenched right out of my soul.

"I need to sit down," he says, but instead of going back into the den, he turns around and heads for the kitchen. I have no choice but to follow him.

When we get to the kitchen he takes a tall glass out of the cupboard, and fills it with water from the dispenser on the refrigerator.

My throat is so dry I'm not sure I can speak, so I do the same.

We sit across from each other at the table where he and my grandmother and I usually have our meals. He checks the app just to confirm that Patricia is sleeping.

"I don't want her to walk in on this," he says, and I nod in agreement.

I don't want to cause my grandmother any pain. Him, I'm not so concerned about. I just want - finally - the truth.

He takes a long drink, draining half the glass, then sets it down and folds his hands on the table, looking directly at me.

"You can't tell your father this."

"I'm not agreeing to that." Is he crazy? "This family has too many secrets already. Don't ask me to hide something from the person who's been there for me my whole life." When you weren't, I want to add, but I stop myself. I don't want to pick a fight with him right now when he finally seems willing to give me some answers.

My grandfather sighs. "All right then. Hear me out, and then if you still want to share this with him, I won't get in your way. I just want you to think about it first."

I nod, but say nothing. My father has played his own role in keeping secrets from me, and it's hurt me. Why would I ever want to pay that forward?

I've always believed it's better to know the truth, even if it hurts.

An image flashes into my mind of Angelica in the doorway to Max's apartment wearing nothing but his shirt, her dark wavy hair looking slightly mussed. Max walking up behind her, telling her to go back in the bedroom. Yeah, sometimes the truth really does hurt.

But it's better for me to know now that Max has already moved on just a week after our break-up, than for me to assume he's been missing me as much as I've been missing him.

I focus my attention back on my grandfather, who's been waiting silently, seeming to be aware that I'm distracted by my thoughts.

"Tell me," I say.

"All right. I'll tell you." He sighs in a way that makes me think that maybe at least some part of him is actually relieved to finally reveal this secret after so many years.

"By the time your father found out about the new experimental treatment at a cancer center in Sweden, Laura had been through multiple rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. She said she often felt like the treatment was worse than the disease. It mattered to her to put on a positive face in front of you and your father. But sometimes she just had to let it all out."

"And she let it all out to the two of you."

"Yes. That's what parents are for, to absorb their children's pain and make things right again. But there was no way to make this right."

I can hear the sharp edge of grief in his voice now. The kind that doesn't dull with time, but that you live with every day.

"If only I could have I'd have taken the cancer," he continues, "moved it from her to me. I'd have done anything, Hadley, to save her. To spare her."

He looks to the side, out the window where the beautiful garden is - even though we can't see it now in the darkness.

"You don't know what it's like to watch your child struggle. To see her grow thin and pale, to see the hair her mother used to brush until it shown, fall out in clumps. To look into her eyes and see pain where there used to be joy."

"That's true," I say, "but I know how to be a child and watch all those things happen to my mother, and not understand."

He looks back at me. "Of course you do. I'm sorry."

Then he's silent so long I think maybe he's done talking.

I have a sudden memory of sitting on my mom's bed, watching her try on different wigs, modeling them for me. How when big clumps of her beautiful hair had started falling off in her hairbrush, she'd had her head shaved, switched to wigs and pretty head scarves. Told me not to worry, it was only hair and it would grow back.

And it did grow back. It grew back, I realize now, when she stopped taking the treatments.

"She didn't want to go through it anymore," I say softly.

"The radiation," he says, "the chemotherapy. It was all so hard on her. And she wasn't getting any better. She'd tried every treatment available here, even gone through one of those clinical trials for a new drug. Nothing worked. The cancer kept spreading. Her prognosis getting worse, not better. And she was suffering. The treatments made her so sick."

He picks up his glass of water again, and his hand shakes. He sets it down abruptly.

"She came to see us. She didn't tell your father. She sat here in the kitchen with us and said she had talked to specialists, done her research, and she was not going to beat this. She didn't have much time left. But they'd also told her that if she stopped the treatments, stopped aggressively bombarding her body with all those chemicals, she could have a better quality of life for the time she did have left. The nausea would go away. Her appetite would come back, at least for awhile. Her hair might grow back. She'd be tired, yes, but she could enjoy things with her family again."

He raises his gaze to mine. "Make memories. For you."

My eyes are filling with tears. I grab a napkin from the pretty holder on the table and dab at them. My throat feels thick as I imagine my mother sitting here in this same kitchen telling her parents she was going to die, but on her terms.

"She told us Brandon had read about a new experimental treatment in Sweden, and he was convinced that this would be the one to save her. She'd looked into it, and there was very little chance that at the stage her cancer had already progressed to it would have any effect at all."

"But it would make her suffer," I say, and he nods.

"Yes. But your father was clinging to it. Clinging to any shred of hope. He was pressuring her to try it. He wanted the three of you to fly to Sweden. He'd take a leave from his job, or quit it altogether if they wouldn't hold it for him. Pay whatever it cost."

"There was no way they could afford it."

"Hadley, if I'd believed there was any chance it would save her, I'd had paid for everything."

"I know," I say softly. "I believe you."

"She said Brandon had looked into every possible way to get funding, and there were no options. She told us she knew he would humble himself, swallow his pride and come here and beg us for the money, despite everything that had happened before.

"She said she needed us to say no."

"So that she didn't have to."

"She'd tried. He didn't hear her. I don't fault him for that. I have a lot of issues with your father, Hadley, but I never doubted how much he loved her."

"In all these years," I tell him, "he's never loved anyone else."

"She said we'd have to be hard, cold, because that was what it would take. If we gave an inch, if he thought there was any chance we'd finance this and she still refused to try it, he'd feel betrayed. Your father was in denial, unable to accept the fact that he was losing her.

"Laura told us he'd keep after her to do it until she finally gave in, and she didn't want to give in. She didn't want to spend the remainder of her time left throwing up and lying in a hospital bed in another country getting treatments that she knew wouldn't save her. But she didn't feel strong enough to refuse him."

"So you had to be the bad guy. She must have known he'd hate you, even more so after she was gone."

He nods. "That was hard, especially for your grandmother. We were afraid that we'd never see you again. That we'd lose our daughter and our only grandchild both at the same time."

And they did, I realize.

He gets up, walks over the refrigerator, refills his water class. Then he just leans with one hand braced on the refrigerator, like he's trying pull his thoughts together, hang onto his composure.

"She said time heals all things, Daddy. She hadn't called me that in years. Not since she was a little girl. But it wasn't true. I will never heal from losing her. I ask myself every day if we made the right decision. Then I look at this. And I know we did."

He pulls out his wallet and opens it, extracts a faded photo he actually had laminated to keep the picture from wearing off.

He walks back to the table and hands it to me, but stays standing.

"She sent us that photo."

I hold it in my hand, stare down at the smiling faces of my parents and me, taken by one of those roving photographers at Disney World, with Cinderella's castle in the background. My mother's hair is in a short cropped style. It hadn't had time to grow in longer yet, but it's her own hair. And she's wearing one of those headbands with the mouse ears.

Frozen in time, it's one of the last truly carefree days I remember with her, when cancer seemed distant, like it couldn't touch us. We'd rented one of those electric scooters for her, which felt fun, not like a wheelchair. And made it possible for her to enjoy the day without getting too tired from walking. When we were able to go to the front of the lines to board rides, I'd felt like a celebrity.

I turn the photo over, and I see my mother's handwriting on the back. Thank you for this. I love you. Laura.

I turn it back over, set it on the table again, and stand up, not sure why or where I'm going.

My grandfather reaches out, puts his arms around me, holds me.

And suddenly I can't stop crying.