"I pictured it wrong." She turns around. "I thought it faced the water."
"That's the back."
Mom nods, setting her bag down on the kitchen chair and looks around the room—the kettle, the cookbook propped open on the counter that I've been working through since August,the ceramic bowl Phoenix bought at a market in Silver Lake that lives on the table and holds everything from keys to rubber bands to the good pen I'm always losing.
"Tea?"
“Please.”
We sitat the kitchen table. I made the tea in the good pot, the one Olive gave me, and poured it into actual cups instead of mugs, which feels right for today.
"Tell me about the book," Mom says, looking at my hair and my face.
I open my mouth to give her the short version. You know, it’s a fantasy novel with a female protagonist, finding out who she is, and then I stop. She deserves the real story.
I tell her that it’s about a woman who spends the whole story thinking she's writing about survival and then realizes at the end that she was really writing about choice. It’s the difference between a life that you plan and what really happens to you. I tell her it started as literary fiction and turned into a romantasy after the protagonist fell for someone I hadn't planned and the book went somewhere I didn't map.
"That's what the good ones do," Mom says.
"That's what Olive told me."
“She's right." Mom takes a sip of her tea. "Is it finished?"
“I’m working on edits."I look at my cup. "It took me a long time to let it be what it wanted to be instead of what I thought it was supposed to be."
Mom is quiet. Outside a bird lands on the windowsill and takes off again. The kettle ticks as it cools.
"I used to do that," she says. "With my life. Decide what it was supposed to be and then try to make everything fit the plan … It doesn't work."
“No. It doesn't."
We sit with that. It's not an apology exactly, we did that already. This is quieter. This is something that two people who are a lot more similar than either of us wants to admit sitting together and acknowledging that fact.
A little while later,I get up and go to the bedroom. James's letter is in the nightstand drawer. I take it out, and I take the copy I made of the letter I wrote back before I mailed it, and I bring both to the kitchen setting them in front of her without an explanation.
Mom picks up James's letter first.
She reads slowly. Her expression doesn't change much. She has the face she gets when she's working through something difficult, focused and still, not giving anything away.
After reading his, she picks up mine and reads it twice.
When she looks back up at me, her eyes are wet. But she doesn’t blink any of the tears away.
"That sounds like you.”
Her words feel like she has recognized me in those sentences.
My throat tightens. Trying to distract myself from the tears welling up in my eyes, I pick up my tea and take a sip.
"I wasn't sure if I should have sent it.”
"You should have. You did." She sets the letter down. "That's enough."
Mom stays until seven.
We talk about Boston—her colleagues at the hospital, the street market she likes, and whether she's going to repaint the apartment. We also talk about Phoenix. I tell her about the restructured company and what it means and that he is trying to stop keeping things from me. She listens and says, “good,” in the same way that Phoenix said it when I told him about the letter.
At six-thirty, Mom gets ready to go back to the hotel since she doesn’t like driving at night. I help her find her bag and her coat and she puts both on in the hallway.
