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probably picking up on the beer that still hadn't dried, setting off an aroma of a not-so great night.
    She rushed forward, red in her sights. When she got about three feet from me, she stopped like she'd hit a wall and plugged her nose. "You reek of beer."
    She looked so disgusted. So...vindicated. I couldn't help but let the truth slip. "A guy spilled a drink on me."
    She gave me the steely look she usually reserved for cross-examinations. She was ready to poke all sorts of holes in my story. "So you're saying that you smell like a bar because a drink was spilled on you?"
    "That's right," I said defensively.
    She invaded my personal space, sniffing a second time. "Did he pour a drink down your throat as well?"
    I pushed past her with a groan. I should have known that it was impossible for her to just show up for me. To stay up because she was worried, and not because she was grilling me like I'd committed some capital offense by going to a party.
    "It was just a beer, Mom. Not even a whole one. What's the big deal?"
    She followed me in the kitchen, not letting up. "You're eighteen, Victoria. Last time I checked, the legal drinking age was twenty-one."
    I trudged to the cabinet, retrieved a glass, and went to the fridge. I pretended that I didn't hear her, that her words weren't getting through, but my hand trembled and my throat was on fire with all of the things I didn't say. That she never gave me credit. That she didn't see that I'd always followed the path she and Dad laid out for me to the freaking letter. I got all the right grades from the moment we started getting A's and B's instead of gold stars and pats on the head. I got into every school I applied to, from Harvard and UConn down to my first choice, Yale. I had a 4.0 my freshman year of college, even though I took 18 credits instead of the normal twelve, and volunteered at the hospital 25 hours a week. I was on my way towards being exactly who she wanted me to be...but somehow, that wasn't enough. I saw it in the way she held me at arm’s length. The way she barely smiled when I showed her my grades. The way she looked at me like I was the biggest disappointment she'd ever seen. And considering she prosecuted drug dealers and murderers, that was saying something.
    The weight of her judgment was too much to take, and I turned my back to her. I put down my almost full glass and gripped the edge of the granite countertop.
    "...if anyone found out that my underage daughter was at some party drinking, I'd be the laughingstock of the county."
    The hurt morphed to venom and my lips dripped poison. "I'm sure they would laugh, Mom. ‘Tough-as-nails DA fails to control her slutty daughter, news at 11’." I gulped down the water, but it didn't quench the flames. The anger was going to eat me alive.
    "H-how...you think this is funny?" she sputtered. "This isn't funny! And it's not just about my career—"
    "Oh please," I rolled my eyes. "Everything's about your career. You could barely carve out the time for your daughter’s coming home dinner." I narrowed my gaze as I caught her flabbergasted expression over my shoulder. She might have been pretty once, but years of work and frowning had turned her soft features hawkish and piercing. Her blonde hair was filled with more gray sections than I remembered. I knew that it was past her usual bedtime of 9pm, but she looked more than just sleepy. She looked exhausted, down to her bones. And if I didn't know better, she actually looked genuinely worried.
    I bit my lip, prying my eyes away. I wasn't ready to accept that she hadn't traded in her mothering ability for an 85% conviction rate in a small town that used to be a haven for mob activity. No one could deny that something happened when she was in the courtroom. I'd seen it with my own two eyes. She was a force to be reckoned with.
    My heart clenched. If those worry lines were to be believed, tonight wasn't the only night she'd stayed up stressing, either. Was it a case or