I waited.
“I told myself for years that I was protecting my son.
That I knew what was good for him better than anyone.” She paused.
“Mothers tell themselves that.
It’s a comfortable thing to believe.”
“It is,” I said.
“I watched you grieve that pregnancy.
I watched you blame yourself.
I watched Nathan try to hold both of you together.” Her voice didn’t waver, but something behind her eyes did.
“And I told myself it wasn’t my fault.
That I hadn’t caused it.
That the letter wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“It would have,” I said.
“We would have gone to a specialist.
We would have had information.
We might have made different choices.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
She didn’t deny it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I know that doesn’t fix it.
I’m not asking you to forgive me.
I just needed you to hear it from my mouth, not secondhand.”
I looked at her for a long moment.
Twenty years.
Holiday dinners and birthday calls and a hundred small kindnesses that I had taken as genuine warmth.
Some of them probably were.
People are rarely only one thing.
But this thing — this specific, deliberate choice — had cost me more than she would ever fully understand.
