"—I'll book the flights as soon as I hang up. First thing. We can be there by tomorrow evening if I—" She stops. Listens. Her jaw works. "No.No, he's not coming. Richard is—Richard and I are going to have a conversation and it's not going to be a short one, but right now I need to get Max out of that house. Out of the state, Georgia. I need distance. I need—"
She breaks.
It's quiet. She presses her hand over her mouth and her shoulders shake once, twice, and then she pulls it back together. She pulls it back together the way she always does—fast, efficient, like grief is a spill she can wipe up if she moves quickly enough.
"I'll call you back in an hour. Thank you. I love you."
She hangs up. Sets the phone on the bedspread. Sits with her hands in her lap.
The room hums.
"Mom."
"Don't." She holds up one hand. Not looking at me. "Don't, Max. Not right now. I can't—I need a minute."
I give her a minute. I give her two. I sit on the edge of my bed with the washcloth in my hand and the bond screaming in my chest—three threads pulling northeast, back toward the house, back toward my whole heart.
My life.
She breathes.
"I'm going to ask you one question," she says. To her hands. "And I need you to answer it honestly. Can you do that for me?"
"Yes."
"Were they hurting you?"
The question lands in my chest like a stone. Not because it's unexpected. Because it's the wrong question, asked by a woman who loves me more than anyone on this planet, and the wrongness of it is the whole problem.
"No, Mom. They weren’t hurting me."
"Max—"
"They weren’t hurting me. They've never hurt me. What you saw—"
"I feel sick, Max." Her voice cracks and reshapes itself in the same breath. "I feel physically sick. I have been running it through my head for two hours and my skin is crawling and I can't—I can't stop seeing it. I can't get it out of my head." She presses the heel of her hand against her sternum like something is lodged there. "I feel dirty. I feel like something is wrong with me for not seeing it before this. For not—how did I not see it? How did I live in that house for nine months and not—" She swallows. Hard. "Ibroughtyou there. Ibroughtyou into that house. I put you in a room down the hall from three grown men and I smiled about it, Max. I was happy. I thought you were thriving. I thought—" Her mouth twists. "God, I'm going to be sick."
"Mom—"
"Don't. Don't tell me it's not what I think. Don't tell me I'm overreacting. I can still feel it in my chest—this awful, crawling thing, like I failed you in a way I can't even name yet. Like the ground I was standing on just opened up and I'm still falling."
I press the cloth harder against my lip. The sting sharpens. Keeps me here.
"You didn't fail me," I say. "And it is what you think. It's exactly what you think. I love him, Mom. I love all three of them. That's what you saw."
She flinches. Full body. Like I hit her.
"Max—"
"You asked me to be honest."
"I asked if they were hurting you!"
"And they're not. What's hurting me right now is sitting in a hotel room listening to you book us flights to Wisconsin like I'm sixteen and you just pulled me out of another foster home."
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I've ever heard.
Her mouth opens. Closes. Her hands are flat on her thighs, pressing down, the way she presses down when she's trying not to let her hands shake.
