Her hair was dark and wavy, always pinned impeccably. There was no lightness. Only precision. Her large green eyes always held a distant quality when they landed on me. Now it was different because she saw me as Fred. And I had received those affectionate, indulgent looks meant for Fred before—because even she couldn’t always tell us apart.

Her gaze had always left me feeling that, despite doing everything right, I was never what she expected.

I had grown up trying to decipher her and ...