My mother passed last fall, and she never really did understand what happened to her house. Maybe that’s a mercy. Marcus and I, we don’t talk much these days. He was right and I called him a liar, and some things between a mother and her son don’t just wash off.

He sent me a text last week. Just one line. “I know you were trying to keep the family together, Mom.” That’s all it said.

I still haven’t figured out how to write him back.

I keep that text open on my phone now. I read it most mornings before I even get out of bed. “I know you were trying to keep the family together, Mom.” He’s being kind about it, and somehow that’s worse than if he’d just yelled at me.

There’s one piece of that spring phone call I never told a soul. Right before he hung up, after I’d already called him every name I could think of, Marcus said something so soft I almost missed it. He said, “She trusts him, Mom. That’s the whole problem.” And you know what I said back? I said, “You watch too much TV, honey.” I really said that. To the one person in this whole family who actually had it right the whole time.

I think about my mother in that passenger seat. The little pink bucket sitting on her lap for the ride home. Her good scarf tied up over her bald head, because she still wanted to look nice for the boy who was driving her. And then I think about Richard signing her name down in some parking lot, folding the paper up nice and neat, then walking back out to help her buckle in. Same hands. The same two hands the whole time.

So now I sit here at my kitchen table with my thumb hanging over the keyboard.

I type out “You were right.” Then I delete it. Every single time. Three words. And I can’t make myself hit send.