As I helped my mom up the stairs to our fifth-floor apartment, it struck me that this might be the last time we would ever have to do this painful dance. Then, I thought of the many times Leslie and I had helped my mother up these stairs. I thought of the many times I’d come home from work and stood under a shower of scalding hot water in a vain attempt to wash away the dirty feeling I got from putting up with men like Roger for the tips. And all the times I sat at my mother’s bedside in the hospital, worried sick about her, and the eventual medical bills, as she recovered from yet another surgery.

Angry tears stung my eyes as I opened the door to our apartment and helped her into her bed in the living room.

“You’re mad at me,” my mom said as she adjusted the pillow behind her back. “And you have every right to be.”

I wanted to shout at her, “Admitting you’ve hurt someone doesn’t make the hurt go away!” But as soon as the words entered my mind, I thought of my conversation with Daniel, which had occurred less than two hours ago.

“I hurt you… You’re not okay.”

“Yes, you hurt me. But we can talk about that later.”

If I could show Daniel mercy after how thoroughly he’d deceived me, I had to do better for my mom.

I yanked the hair tie out of the loose bun on top of my head, letting the brown, tangled mess fall over my shoulders as I sank into the recliner. “Mom, even if you tell me your ‘long story,’ the truth is that I’ll probably never understand why you kept me from knowing him,” I began, pulling my legs up onto the chair to sit cross-legged. “But there’s no sense in letting it get between us now. You’re my only mom. I have to trust that you did it for the right reasons, because I can’t lose you and my father at the same time.”

My mom was silent for a long while as she wiped tears from her pale cheeks. She had hardly seen the sun for two years straight, spending most of her time in this apartment or in hospital rooms. She had also suffered. Nothing would make me happier than to take her to that beach house and see her basking in the sun on that beautiful stretch of sand.

“Not a day went by where I didn’t question whether I was doing the right thing,” she said, her voice thick with regret. “I used to work for your father. We had a brief fling that ended when I told him I was pregnant. I was young and stupid. I thought he really cared about me. I didn’t care that he didn’t take me on dates or introduce me to his non-existent family. I didn’t care that most of our time together was spent in the bedroom. I was charmed by his charisma and, very stupidly, enchanted by his riches.”

I cringed as I realized I had been just as foolishly captivated by Daniel’s pretend riches. Like mother, like daughter. It seemed the only thing I could be angry about was that she didn’t share this story with me in time for me to learn from her mistakes.

Her voice took on a hard edge as she continued. “When I told him I was pregnant, he fired me on the spot. He told me I’d better get a lawyer if I ever expected to get a dime out of him. Then, he laughed, because he knew I couldn’t afford a lawyer.” She looked up at me with shame in her eyes. “You were about four months old. I was feeling particularly overwhelmed and lonely one day, and I called him to ask if we could meet. He told me he was in the Hamptons, and invited me there to hash out the visitation details over brunch.

“So I buckled you into your car seat and I drove all the way to his beach house to offer him another chance to be a part of your life. But when I got there…I found him having sex with not one, but two women in his hot tub. He invited me there to humiliate me.” The shame in my mother’s eyes turned to steel. “And I decided right then and there that I wouldn’t allow it. Never again.” Her gaze locked on me as her eyes pleaded with me to understand. “He proved to me that day that I didn’t know him at all. You might as well have been conceived in a one-night stand with a random stranger. The thought of allowing a stranger to have unsupervised visits with you terrified me. In my mind, my only choice was to forget him.”

I gritted my teeth, still attempting to temper my anger. “But you didn’t know if he would have been a good father. You never gave him a chance to try,” I said, feeling sick with myself for defending this man who was obviously an emotional sadist.

My mom stared into the distance, thinking carefully before she spoke again. “You’re right. Maybe he would have done a complete 360 and turned into the Father of the Year.” She shrugged as if this was a vague possibility. “I honestly believed it was much more likely that he would have toyed with our emotions and our livelihoods. I’m almost certain he would have reeled us in and tossed us back out over and over again for his own personal enjoyment. Then, his lawyers would have terrorized us until I agreed to some kind of settlement that would only devalue your true worth. You didn’t deserve that.”

I glanced around the apartment, very obviously taking in the value of our furnishings and the decrepit apartment they were housed in. “This is what I deserved instead?”

She beckoned me to her side, patting the mattress for me to sit next to her. “Come here, sweetheart.”

I felt like a dejected child who had just been given a very reasonable explanation for why they were too young to attend a sleepover. I didn’t want to believe my mom had a good reason for keeping me from my father. But the more she spoke, the more I realized that I probably would have done the same thing in her position.

When I sat on the edge of her bed, she swiftly pulled me into her arms and held me so tightly it actually hurt. But I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t, because it was exactly what I needed.

I wept into her shoulder-length graying hair that smelled distinctly like coconut, which managed to make me smile as I cried. “I’m sorry if I sounded ungrateful, Mom,” I said, releasing her and still wiping away tears as I looked her in the eye. “You worked your ass off to take care of me on your own. You resisted the temptation of money to make sure I would always feel loved. I hope I can be half as badass as you when I get my inheritance.”

She smiled from ear to ear as she reached up and grabbed my face. “With or without that money, you were always destined to be more badass than me.”

We laughed as she took me into her arms again, where I settled in for a long while.