“Robert said she wouldn’t come to the phone.”
Helen nodded.
“She wouldn’t.”
“Robert told me not to come,” Mom said. “He said Anna needed space and that I was making it harder for her to settle.”
Helen closed her eyes.
“Mom thought you’d come anyway.”
Mom looked crushed.
“So she really didn’t want to talk to me.”
“She was hurt,” Helen said. “But she didn’t want you to disappear.”
Helen opened the box again. “She was waiting to see if you’d come get her.”
Mom stared at her.
“She was 12,” Helen said. “She thought if you really wanted her, you’d refuse to let her go.”
Mom’s face folded.
“I thought letting her choose was the loving thing.”
“She thought fighting her choice was.”
Neither woman spoke.
Two people had spent more than 50 years on opposite sides of the same misunderstanding.
Then Helen picked up the photograph of me.
“After Amani was born, you sent my mother this.”
“With a letter,” Mom said immediately.
Helen looked at her.
“A letter?”
“Four pages.”
Helen’s face changed.
“There wasn’t a letter.”
Mom stared at her.
“I wrote that I wanted Anna to come home. I told her she had a little sister. I told her her room was still hers.”
