Chapter 7 — Sunday Calls

My mother called on Sundays, and I had gotten very good, over eight months, at not quite answering.

I’d let it ring out and text back that I was busy, or I’d pick up and keep it to ten bright minutes and get off before the silences could start.

Rhonda and I loved each other, I want to be clear, in the wordless and complicated way of a mother and a daughter from a family where love was expressed through worry and worry through criticism.

But I was the one who’d left.