Because I finally understood the thing that had taken me thirty years and a foreclosure to learn: an empty seat is only a sorrow when it belongs to someone you are still waiting for.

And I was not waiting anymore.

I was not waiting for my mother to become the woman who would bring the handkerchief.

I was not waiting for my father to decide I was worth two hours of his morning.

I was not waiting for Tate to become a brother instead of a thief, or for any of them to look at me and finally, at last, see a daughter instead of a resource.

The waiting was what had hurt, all those years — not the absence itself but the endless, hoping, straining wait for the absence to be filled.