At the birthday party, my son showed up with a black eye, and my sister’s son boasted that he “definitely will never forget it.” The room erupted in laughter—until my son uttered a quiet remark that shattered the evening’s warmth and caused my sister to drop her wine glass. For a moment, the music, the breeze from the lake, even the soft clink of a fork on a dessert plate seemed to stop in midair. I was a single mother in my forties, running a small lakeside diner in a sleepy American town where