Chapter 14 - REBECCA COMES HOMERebecca flew in from Denver when Lily was six weeks old.
She stayed at a hotel.
Not Patricia’s house.
She asked to meet me.
I almost refused.
Then I thought about Sophie.
Rebecca arrived carrying no flowers.
No casserole.
Just herself.
“I owe you the truth.”
We sat at my kitchen table.
She told me about their childhood.
Patricia had not been constantly violent.
That would have been easier to identify.
She was loving.
Funny.
Organized.
The mother who remembered permission slips and made Halloween costumes by hand.
Then she had episodes.
Usually when she felt ignored.
Sometimes she threw things.
Once she broke a plate.
Once she slapped Rebecca at seventeen.
Once she slapped Daniel at nineteen.
Then Michael would calm everyone.
Apologies.
Flowers.
“Your mother was stressed.”
“Your mother loves you.”
“Don’t make this bigger.”
When Rebecca married, distance solved much of it.
When Daniel married me, Patricia focused on us.
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
Rebecca’s eyes filled.
“Because I didn’t think of her as dangerous.”
“She bruised your daughter.”
“I know.”
“You hid it.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d spent forty years being taught that the person who tells outsiders is the one who hurts the family.”
That sentence stayed with me.
May you like
Not because it excused her.
Because I could see the machinery.
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