Had his mother always been this way? Saying one thing and meaning something else? Why was he only able to see it so clearly now? Because you’re an adult now, his brain supplied. Before he’d left at eighteen, Gabe had still viewed his parents through the lens of a child, interpreting their actions only in relation to himself. He hadn’t yet learned to see them as real people. Now, he’d been gone so long, it was like seeing dual images of them: the parents he remembered, and the people—older people—that they were now. He was forced to confront the truth that they were fully formed humans beyond
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