In between, we talked too.
At first, carefully, because what exactly is the right tone with the man your mother once loved before you were born?
Then less carefully.
She told me she’d grown up hearing my name in fragments.
It was never spoken bitterly or in a scandalous way. It was simply said occasionally, in old stories, when Margaret spoke about being young.
“She always called you the one who got away,” Ellen said one evening while Margaret slept.
I looked down at my hands. “I’m sorry for that.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think she meant it with regret by the end. More like… a room in her heart that never got closed.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I reached for her hand and squeezed it once.
On Margaret’s final morning, the light through the hospital blinds was soft and yellow, almost kind.
She had been drifting in and out for hours.
