I didn’t move.
Stood in the hallway with my water glass and my bare feet and the cold tile under my soles and listened to my mother talk about the boy I loved to the man who was trying to erase him from my life.
“He never asks to talk to her, Richard. That’s the thing.” My mom’s voice was quiet. Tired. Carrying the weight of something she hadn’t expected to feel and didn’t know what to do with. “He calls. He asks if she’s eating. If she slept. If she went outside today. And then he says thank you and he hangs up. That’s it. Every single day.”
Richard’s voice came through the phone – muffled, clipped, the cadence of a man who didn’t like the direction of the conversation and was trying to redirect it.
“Twice a day,” my mom said. Softer now. Almost to herself. “He calls twice a day and I
