“I know,” I answered.
“I thought you wanted him because you couldn’t stand that I had something you didn’t.”
“I know.”
“I repeated things he said.”
“Yes.”
“I made people believe them.”
“Yes.”
She pressed her lips together.
“I don’t know how to fix that.”
For the first time all day, my voice softened.
“You don’t fix it with one conversation.”
She nodded, tears sliding down her face.
“I’m sorry.”
I had imagined that apology too.
From her most of all.
I thought it would feel like victory.
It did not.
It felt like standing in the wreckage of a house we had all lived in, finally admitting the foundation had been cracked from the beginning.
My mother cried openly then.
“I should have believed you.”
“Yes,” I said.
The answer was not gentle.
But it was honest.
She closed her eyes.
“I was so afraid of the family falling apart.”
