She exhales sharply. “Emma, I?—”
“No,” I interrupt, my voice firm. “You don’t get to explain or make excuses. Not anymore. I’ve spent too much of my life carrying around the pain of your choices. I’ve bent over backward trying to make you care, but I’m done.”
Her voice is shaky when she speaks again. “You don’t know what it was like for me. Raising a kid on my own, trying to make something of myself. I did the best I could.”
“Did you?” The words come out before I can stop them, low and edged with years of hurt I’ve tried to bury. “Because it sure felt like you were doing what was best for you. Not me.”
The other end of the line is quiet for a moment before she starts speaking again. “You’re still holding onto that? Emma, you’re a mother now. You should understand how hard it is.”
“I do understand,” I say quietly, my throat tight. “That’s why I’m here, doing everything I can for Milo. I don’t just show up when it’s convenient. I won’t do that.”
Her sharp inhale on the other end tells me I’ve struck a nerve. There’s a slight dip in my stomach at the silence. I don’t want to hurt her, but she needs to feel the weight of this. I’ve carried it long enough.
“Emma,” she begins, her voice softer now, almost pleading. “I know I wasn’t perfect?—”
“You weren’t anything,” I cut in. “I needed you. I needed you to care about my scraped knees, nightmares, and schoolplays. I needed you to see me, but you were too busy trying to escape your own life to bother with mine.”
“I was doing what I had to do to survive,” she says, her voice defensive.
“But I was a kid, Mom!” I snap. The words rip out of me like they’ve been clawing to escape for years. “I didn’t need you to be perfect. I just needed you to try.”
Silence stretched between us, heavy and suffocating. For a moment, I think I’ll be greeted with the harsh dial tone of her hanging up, but then I hear a shaky exhale.
“You don’t understand, Emma,” she says, her tone deflated. “You think it was easy for me to look at you and see everything I’d failed at? Every time I saw you, it was like looking in a mirror and seeing someone who wasn’t good enough to be a mother.”
Her words sink into my skin but don’t soften my resolve. “You’ve had so long to change your mind and be a part of my life. And Milo’s life. But you chose to pull away because you knew I’d always welcome you back with open arms. But not anymore. Now I have a choice, and I choose to let go of waiting for something you can’t give me.”
“Emma—” she starts, but her voice cracks. For the first time in my life, I hear something that sounds like vulnerability.
“I forgive you,” I say, surprising myself. The words taste foreign but right. “Not for you, but for me. Because I can’t keep carrying this pain around anymore, I need to move on.”
The silence this time is different. It’s not angry or defensive—it’s quiet and full of regret.
“I’m sorry,” she finally whispers, and something shifts inside me. I’ve been waiting for an apology for so long, yet it’s too late.
“I know,” I say, swallowing my tears. “But sorry doesn’t fix it. I don’t know if anything will ever fix it, but you need to figure that out for yourself, Mom.”
“Thank you for saying what you needed to say.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “Goodbye, Mom.”
When I hang up, the pain in my chest doesn’t vanish, but it does feel lighter. I stand there for a moment, letting the cool evening air fill my lungs. I take one final deep breath before going inside, but then I almost run into Julia, bursting through the library doors with her arms over her chest.
“Hey,” I say, slipping my phone into my back pocket. “Everything okay?”
She stops at the top of the stairs and looks down at me. The glow of the streetlights bounces off her skin and reflects in a dim halo hovering above her head. From a distance, she looks young and almost angelic, but if you look closer, you can see the way her shoulders slump forward from carrying the weight of life.
“Yeah,” she sighs. “Actually, I don’t know. I felt good saying those things aloud, but the one person I needed to hear them didn’t show up. She never does.”
Julia’s eyes drift toward the parking lot, scanning the asphalt for any signs of life. My heart aches for her. “She never showed, did she?”
Her jaw tightens, and a little crack starts to form on her perfectly porcelain skin. She shakes her head. “No.”
I exhale slowly and walk toward her. “I’m sorry, Julia. For what it’s worth, you were amazing tonight. Your words truly moved me and gave me the power to confront my own mother. You have a gift.”
“Really?” she asks, her eyebrows lifting in surprise.
I nod my head and lean against the cool brick of the library. “Yes. I resonated with everything you said. I know the feeling of hoping and waiting for the unconditional love you were promised. You convince yourself that they’ll change and something will click, but sometimes, the people we love the most are the ones who let us down. They neglect to give uswhat we deserve, not because we’re not worthy, but because they don’t know how.”
