Chapter 13 — The Word He Didn’t Mean to Say

About a month after he moved in, it happened by accident.

He was in the hallway, hunting for something, and he called out without thinking — the way you call out in a house you live in, to a person you belong to.

That is the whole weight of the word, and it is why it undid us both.

Mom is not a name; it is a claim.

It is a word you only call out when you are so sure of someone’s presence that you do not even think before you use it, when a person has become so woven into the fabric of your days that your voice reaches for them automatically in a moment of small need.