“Mom.”
“I apologized,” she said.
“Did he forgive you?”
“Immediately.”
“So you stopped him from going back?”
Her head snapped toward me.
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that I believed her.
“I spent years trying to get him to go.”
She suggested it when I was ten.
Dad said they couldn’t afford it.
She suggested it after his promotion.
He said work was too busy.
She suggested Hawaii for their twenty-fifth anniversary.
Dad said the people he’d known were probably gone.
“They weren’t,” Mom said.
“How do you know?”
“Christmas cards.”
I stared at her.
“They sent cards?”
“For years.”
“Did Dad answer?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then why would he think they didn’t want him?”
Mom gave a sad little shrug.
“Because every card reminded him how long it had been.”
One summer, she finally told him she’d buy the ticket herself.
Dad said, “Next year.”
