Page 92 of The Yoga Teacher

His mother nodded. “She always struck me as someone who would grow into herself.”

“She is.” His voice cracked. “She really is.”

A long silence settled between them.

Then, too fast, too loud, he blurted, “I fucked it up.”

His mother didn’t flinch.

“I cheated on her.”

Still, she said nothing.

Daniel couldn’t meet her eyes. He stared down into his mug, like he could hide in the steam, like it might scald away the filth on him. “It was—God—it was so fucking stupid. It meant nothing.Shemeant nothing.”

His mother blinked, slow. “Who?”

“A yoga teacher.”

Her face didn’t move, but he winced like she’d slapped him. “Ouryoga teacher. Hannah loved that class. She got me into it.” His breath hitched. “And I—” He shook his head, fingers tightening around the mug. “I took something important to her and I hurt her.”

Still, his mother said nothing. Just watched him fall apart.

“I ruined us,” he said, voice thin. “I ruined everything.”

There was a long beat. And then her voice, low and quiet. “Why?”

He didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to hear himself say it out loud. But he owed her the truth. Owed someone.

“I don’t know,” he said, barely above a whisper. “She was young. Flirty. She made me feel like I still had… something.” He rubbed a hand over his face, rough. “Like I wasn’t fading.”

He let out a bitter laugh that sounded more like a choke.

“Jesus, listen to me. It’s pathetic. I sound like a cliché wrapped in a midlife crisis wrapped in a goddamn Lifetime movie.”

His mother didn’t argue. She didn’t try to soften it.

“It sounds human,” she said. “Ugly, but human.”

He nodded, shame crawling under his skin like fire ants. “I hated myself as soon as it happened. I still do.”

Silence. “You know,” his mother said, adjusting the mug in her hands, “I don’t hate getting older.”

Daniel blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

“Never have,” she went on, her voice steady. “You stop worrying about the wrong things. You get sharper. Quieter. I feel more like myself at sixty-three than I ever did at thirty.”

Daniel looked at her, finally. And all he could feel was the distance between them—not emotional, but existential. Like she had evolved into something he’d never be.

He wouldn’t get better with age.

His mother looked at him. She tilted her head, too perceptive. “You don’t have a problem withHannahgetting older, do you?”

The question landed with surgical precision.

“No,” he said immediately, too fast, too fierce. “God, no. She just keeps getting—” He broke off, breath catching. “Better.” It wasn’t a strong enough word.

There was something soft and sharp behind his mother’s gaze. “You don’t think you could get better?”

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