Same faded rug by the door. Same cluttered bookshelf with her dog-eared romances. Same old couch with the lumpy left cushion. The same ceramic owl clock on the wall that ticks too loudly. It all smells faintly of cinnamon and old lemon cleaner.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I need the feeling ofsamenow more than ever.
“Sit,” she says, shooing me toward the couch like I’m eight again and came in from sledding. “I’ll make cocoa.”
I obey, sinking into the cushion I’ve sunk into a thousand times before. The upholstery smells of home, and faraway holidays, and too loud family dinners. My eyes drift to the mantel, where pictures sit in their mismatched frames. There’s me and Charlotte as kids, me and Mom on my high school graduation day, one of the three of us at a fall festival two years ago.
No photos of my father anywhere.
There haven’t been for years.
The cocoa arrives steaming, topped with exactly three marshmallows. She hands me the mug and settles beside me, pulling one leg up under herself the way she always does when she’s bracing for a hard conversation.
“All right,” she says softly. “Tell me.”
So I try.
I start with the wedding. How big it was, how strange it felt, how every detail had been decided for me. How the walls were closing in. How I couldn’t breathe in that dress, now stuffed into the canvas bag dropped by the front door.
How I ran.
How I ended up in Dallas’s house in the middle of a snowstorm, sobbing and freezing and choking on all the things I’d been pushing down for years.
Mom listens without interrupting. She has always been the listener in our house. The one who let her daughters talk, ramble, cry, unravel. The one who stitched us back up afterward.
When I finish, she blows out a long, shaky breath.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Her hand finds mine and squeezes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It was my choice,” I say, staring into the cocoa. “I should’ve seen it sooner. Should’ve stopped letting him run my life.”
She shakes her head. “Faith… you’re not the first woman he steamrolled.”
I meet her eyes.
“He wasn’t cruel,” she continues. “Not in the ways people expect. But he chipped away at me. Little cuts. Little criticisms. Little demands. And I let him. For too long.”
I look down at my hands.
I know those cuts.
I feel them every time I check my phone, expecting to be yelled at. Every time I apologize too quickly. Every time I make myself small.
Mom sighs, brushing my hair behind my ear. “He’s worse now. Harder. More rigid. Maybe success made him that way. Maybe age. Maybe losing you and Charlotte’s patience over the years. But it’s not new, Faith. It didn’t start with you.”
Tears sting my eyes again. “I didn’t realize how much I let him control.”
“You were trying to please him,” she says gently. “You always did. My sweet girl who hates disappointing people. You were never the problem.”
I want to believe her.
I want it with an ache that goes bone deep.
