“You could have called me.”
“I know.”
“You’re twenty-five.”
“I know.”
“Being their child explains some of it.
It doesn’t explain all of it.”
She began crying then, quietly.
I didn’t comfort her.
Not because I wanted her to suffer.
Because for once, I understood that another person’s tears didn’t automatically create a duty for me.
After a while she said, “They told me you didn’t want to see me.”
I folded my arms.
“When?”
“When we were kids.
I asked to send you a birthday card.
Mom said Grandpa had returned the last one.”
“There wasn’t a last one.”
“I know that now.”
I thought of thirteen-year-old me on the kitchen floor, staring at pictures of her beside a pool.
“I looked for you,” I said.
She wiped her face.
“I looked for you too.”
“You could have found me.”
“Yes.”
That answer stayed between us.
