Daniel continued.
“I thought if you stayed in Chicago, something in you would disappear.”
“It nearly did.”
“So when you moved here and started cooking and driving the kids around and making friends…”
He smiled slightly.
“You became Mom again.”
A sharp tenderness rose inside me.
“But somewhere along the way,” he said, “I started treating that version of you like she existed for us.”
I said nothing.
“I thought needing you was the same as loving you.”
“That is an important difference.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
He nodded.
“Now.”
I looked at my son.
The boy who used to climb into our bed during thunderstorms.
The man who held my hand at Arthur’s funeral.
The father who worked too much and worried too quietly.
He had hurt me.
