Laughing about money we could barely comprehend.
Laughing about secrets.
Laughing about the absurdity of discovering your son’s hidden nonprofit before breakfast.
And I thought that was the final surprise.
It wasn’t.
Not even close.
Three months later, Same Table held its first national conference.
Mason hated the word conference.
He preferred “meeting.”
According to him, conferences involved “unnecessary lanyards.”
The event took place at a university forty minutes from home.
Over three hundred people attended.
Autistic adults.
Parents.
Restaurant owners.
Teachers.
Designers.
Occupational therapists.
Community organizers.
Hospital staff.
Mason refused to give a traditional keynote.
Instead, he sat in a replica of booth seven onstage and answered questions.
I sat beside Hannah in the second row.
Our friendship had survived.
Barely at first.
There were hard conversations.
Arguments.
Apologies.
She admitted she should have pushed harder to help Mason tell me sooner.
I admitted she had given him something I had struggled to give.
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