When I Was Four, My Mother Left Me Alone in a Church—Twenty Years Later She Returned Crying, “We Need You”

I could give marrow without giving trust.

I could help Hannah without calling the woman who abandoned me:

Mom.

I could speak to Leo without pretending twenty years had vanished.

I could accept my mother’s later apology without moving into some imaginary upstairs bedroom she had preserved for a four-year-old who no longer existed.

That distinction saved me.

Florence had taught it long before I needed it.

“You don’t owe them your body.”