Chapter 13 - The Argument Mom Couldn't Win
Dana came to Simone's house Tuesday evening with two bags of groceries and the exhausted look she wore after a double shift. She found me folding towels in the living room.
"I brought the pasta you like," she said.
It was such an ordinary thing to say that I nearly let it undo me. For years, kindness from Mom had come between emergencies, like a small patch on a roof that still leaked.
"Thank you," I answered. "You can leave it here."
"Come home tonight. The girls keep asking."
"I'll visit. I'm not moving back."
She set the bags down. "You have no idea how hard I worked to keep us together after your father left."
"I know. I was there."
"Then you know what happens when one person stops carrying their share."
I looked at the familiar shopping bags, the tired shoulders, the hands with small cuts from cardboard boxes. Mom wasn't a movie villain. She was a woman who'd learned to count on a child and then decided the arrangement made her right.
"You taught me to keep the house running," I said. "You never taught me I was allowed to stop."
She stared at me. The fight drained out for a moment.
"I was scared," she admitted. "Every time something went wrong, you fixed it. I thought if you left, everything would collapse."
"So you tried to collapse my future first?"
"I didn't think it would really be gone. I thought you'd stay, and after a year we could talk."
"You didn't even ask what a year would cost me."
Mom wiped at her face. "I'll tell the college it was a misunderstanding."
"Don't. Tell them the truth if they ask. And give Natasha her deposit back."
May you like
She picked up her bags as if I'd slapped her. At the doorway she turned.
"If they call me tomorrow, I'll tell them you asked me to do it. I'm still your mother."
