On Saturday afternoon, she stood back from the wall with a paintbrush in her hand and said, “Mom? Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why didn’t you call Dad that day? When you first saw the truck. You always used to call him. Every time something happened, you’d call him and try to work it out.”
I set down my roller.
“I almost did,” I said. “My thumb was right on his name.”
“What stopped you?”
I thought about how to explain it.
“For twenty-seven years,” I said, “whenever your father did something that hurt me, I’d call him and ask him to explain. And he always had an explanation. And somehow, by the end of the conversation, I was the one apologizing. I was the one who’d overreacted. I was the one who’d misunderstood.”
Lauren nodded slowly.
“That morning,” I said, “I was looking at a camera. I could see exactly what was happening. And I realized that if I called him, he’d do what he always did. He’d talk until I didn’t trust my own eyes anymore.”
