I stared at Spencer, not believing what I heard. Her mom slapped her. The shock of hearing it was bracing. The “Can’t leave home without breakfast” mother. The “Diagonally cut sandwiches” mother. Hit Spencer. Because of me.

Of course, Spencer didn’t say that – she would never even intimate it, but I learned to read between the lines and hear the unspoken at an early age.

And Spencer… I could see how hard she tried to be flippant and breezy about it – straight from the Ashley School of Parental Dysfunction – but it’s difficult to pull off the could-care-less attitude when you have to keep blinking away tears. I should know.

That was the first time I heard her voice on the verge of tears. I could have cried for her right then. But, instead, I followed her lead and threw out a joke about maternal mood swings and dangers of estrogen imbalance in women of that age. Spencer tried a chuckle, but it came out as a cross between a hiccup and a sob.

I undid my seatbelt and opened my arms. She looked at me, wide-eyed, and swallowed. For a second she teetered on the edge of deciding whether to try to tough it out or give in, and it nearly killed me to see her like that. Was it mere weeks ago that Spencer was a daughter going to the movies with her mother and receiving good-night kisses like all good girls do? A tear slipped down her cheek, and she slid into my arms and sobbed.

I held her then and didn’t say anything. What could I say to her? “It will be okay”? “She didn’t mean it, Spence”? “If they hit you, at least you know they still care”? Hold your tongue, Ashley. Instead, I let her cry, and kissed the top of her head; a pale substitute for what she lost.

Afterwards, I gave her a tissue and lent her my mirror as I drove us to school. Half-way there she turned the music on, loud. I looked at her. She smiled. Then she put her hand on my forearm and left it there. She didn’t have to say anything – we had the music and the wind in our hair and we could make that be enough for a while. And – she tried to hit a high note in the song and I cringed – maybe it would be okay.