“I wasn’t mad at you, Margaret,” she said. “I was scared of you. Of what you’d become. Of what my mother became.”
She put her face in her hands.
“And Daniel didn’t say anything,” she said. “Because he was scared too. We were drowning. And you were the only thing in the house we thought we could let go of.”
I sat at my yellow kitchen table.
Looking at my daughter-in-law.
“Renee,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me? About your mother?”
She looked up.
“Because you’d just lost Harold,” she said. “And you’d just sold your house. And you were so sad. I didn’t want to give you one more thing to worry about.”
She laughed. A broken laugh.
“So instead,” she said, “I gave you a retirement community brochure.”
I told Lorraine on Monday.
“I want to pay for Renee’s mother,” I said. “Her memory care. For as long as she needs it.”
