Chapter 3 - WHAT MOM HEARD
Mom stayed silent during the drive back to her house.
I didn’t force conversation.
When we reached the small brick colonial she and Dad had lived in for thirty-seven years, I carried her handbag inside.
She sat at the kitchen table.
Dad’s coffee mug was still beside the sink.
Nobody had moved it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I stopped.
“For what?”
“The will.”
“You didn’t write it.”
“I knew.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Not the amounts.”
Her voice shook.
“But your father told me Daniel would get the rentals.”
“And you said nothing?”
“He said Daniel had helped him manage them.”
“Daniel collected rent twice a month.”
“I know.”
“What did Dad say about me?”
Mom stared at the table.
“That you didn’t need anything.”
The words hurt more than I expected.
“Because?”
“You have a career.”
“So does Daniel.”
“He said Daniel had employees depending on him.”
“And Eric?”
“Tyler needed help starting his life.”
I laughed bitterly.
“I’m thirty-eight, Mom. Apparently mine is finished.”
“Rachel.”
“What?”
She began crying again.
I immediately regretted my tone.
Not my point.
The tone.
I sat.
She whispered:
“He kept saying you’d take care of me.”
“Did I ever tell him that?”
“No.”
“Did he ask me?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
She looked up quickly.
“No.”
That mattered.
I reached across the table.
“Then listen to me.”
Her fingers were cold.
“I love you.”
She began crying harder.
“But I am not going to let Dad decide from the grave that loving you means becoming your unpaid full-time caregiver while Daniel and Eric cash checks.”
She closed her eyes.
“I don’t want to be a burden.”
There it was.
The word my father had put into the room without ever writing it.
Burden.
I squeezed her hand.
“You are not a burden.”
Then I added something harder.
“But caring for another adult is work.”
Mom stared at me.
“And pretending it isn’t work is exactly how families dump all of it on one woman.”
For the first time that day, Mom nodded.
Slowly.
May you like
Not because she liked hearing it.
Because she knew it was true.
