“I called your old apartment,” she said. “You had already left. I told myself if it were real, you would come back. You would fight harder.”
The words landed quietly, but they struck something deep.
I thought of myself at twenty-five, swollen with four fragile lives, sleeping upright because breathing hurt, answering calls from creditors, building a business from a borrowed laptop while pretending I wasn’t terrified. I thought of hospital lights, tiny cries, incubators, my mother’s hands rubbing circles on my back before she died, and nights when I whispered to four cribs that I was sorry their father wasn’t there.
“You wanted a pregnant woman to fight harder for a family that had locked the door,” I said.
Patricia wept then. Silently. Completely.
Marcus turned away, gripping the mantel. “You let me believe there was no proof.”
“You wanted to believe it,” Harold said.
That brought Marcus around. “What does that mean?”
Harold’s jaw tightened. “It means your mother hid the envelope, but she didn’t make you cruel. She didn’t make you refuse Kesha’s calls. She didn’t make you sign divorce papers without meeting her face to face. She didn’t make you vanish.”
Marcus stared at him, stunned.
