“I can finally be your mother again.”
“I needed time,” she continued. “I was grieving. There was no future left after your father died… and I was still carrying you.”
She glanced toward me.
“Now things are different. I have money. I can finally give you opportunities you never would’ve had here.”
Here.
I looked around.
“I have money.”
The secondhand coffee table my son Archie had dented as a teenager.
The hallway lined with school pictures.
The couch where I had spent countless nights sitting upright with feverish little girls asleep against me.
Lily smiled politely.
“Mom,” she said. “Come in.”
Amanda’s whole face brightened.
“Mom, come in.”
Grace and Amelia exchanged a glance.
“We actually have something for you,” Lily added.
Amanda laughed.
“For me?”
“We always thought you might come back someday.”
Lily disappeared upstairs.
“We actually have something for you.”
Amanda looked pleased.
“Children always wonder about their mother.”
The word settled heavily between us.
***
My mind slipped backward 15 years…
The girls were six months old.
Amanda stood on my porch with three car seats lined beside the taxi.
She looked exhausted.
“Children always wonder about their mother.”
For one hopeful second, I thought she’d come asking for help.
Instead she said, “Take them.”
I caught Lily before I understood what was happening.
Amanda placed Grace’s carrier beside me.
Amelia’s came next.
“I can’t do this anymore, Bellina,” she muttered.
