Melissa looked down.
Slowly, she untied it.
She took it off. She folded it. Carefully. She set it on the table in front of me.
“And if I say no,” I said, “you accept it. You don’t argue. You don’t tell me I’m being difficult. You don’t call me sensitive. You don’t send Aunt Linda texts about how I never say no.”
Ezoic
I looked at my mother.
Ezoic
“Because I’m going to say no sometimes,” I said. “And that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It means I’m a person. With a house. And a life. That I built myself.”
The kitchen was silent for a long time.
Then my father spoke.
“Morgan,” he said.
His voice was very quiet.
“Can I ask you something?”
I looked at him.
It was the first time in my life I’d ever heard my father say those words.
