“Mom,” Caleb was in the doorway. “Please say something.”
“You knew this for a while, but you sat at my table on the Fourth of July, and you didn’t tell me,” I said, wiping away tears.
“We were scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of exactly this. Of you standing in the kitchen like you can’t look at us.”
I turned around.
My beautiful boys. Nothing about them had changed, and at the same time, everything had.
“I’m not angry at you,” I said, and my voice broke on the last word. “I don’t know what I am. But it isn’t that.”
Noah came up behind Caleb.
“What are you going to do?”
I climbed onto a stool and picked up my phone from the kitchen counter. My hands shook so badly, just as they had 20 years ago in that same kitchen. I dropped it once.
I found his name.
I had rehearsed this call in my head for exactly zero seconds, and I already knew what I wanted to say.
I wanted to tell him that our friendship was over. I wanted to tell him he had no right. I wanted to tell him that love without permission is just another version of leaving, and I’d had enough of being left.
Raymond picked up on the second ring.
“Kim.”
He already knew. I could hear it in the single syllable.
I opened my mouth to say it all.
“Come,” I said instead. “Now.”
I hung up.
