“I thought she would, eventually.”
I looked at the framed photograph on my dresser.
My mother, laughing in our bathroom.
Pink dye on her fingers.
She had been sick already, though I didn’t know how little time we had.
I picked it up.
“Do you remember this picture?”
Jake nodded.
“You told me she made you feel brave.”
“She told me I never had to shrink myself to make other people comfortable.”
“I remember.”
“Then you knew what the tattoo meant.”
His eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“And you still agreed to remove it.”
“I thought maybe, if you changed the picture, you could remember her without carrying that time in your life on your skin.”
I stared at him.
“That time in my life?”
“When you were 18. When everything hurt. I thought keeping the tattoo meant you were still stuck there.”
“My mother isn’t something to move past.”
“I didn’t mean—”
