Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me

by Adrienne Brodeur

Deception takes commitment, vigilance, and a very good memory. To keep the truth buried, you must tend to it.

My mother always had an easier time finding fault than strengths in our friends.

“Loneliness is not about how many people you have around. It’s about whether or not you feel connected. Whether or not you’re able to be yourself.”

“You have no idea how much you can learn about yourself by plunging into someone else’s life,” Margot said.

we would meet at the café adjacent to her bookstore, where she’d offer literary fiction as antidepressant. She gave me novel after novel: Love in the Time of Cholera, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Lover, Vanity Fair. Each told stories of how characters coped with adversity, bad choices, life’s onslaughts.

“Don’t listen to the voices at night,” Kyra told me over the phone. “They act like they have answers but they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Aristotle famously suggested that through the mirror of friendship, people are able to see themselves in ways that are otherwise inaccessible.

Where is Nora Ephron when we need her? I took this to mean “Embrace the mess, live fully, carry on.”