I didn’t sleep much that night. I lay awake thinking about the first time I’d ever really spoken to her.
She’d been sitting in her chair by the window with a book open on her lap, glaring at it. She’d lost her reading glasses again, and the words were just gray smudges to her.
“I could read it to you,” I offered.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Fine. But don’t you dare use that sugary voice people put on for old ladies.”
I laughed, and that was the beginning.
After that, I spent my breaks in her room, reading aloud while she interrupted to argue about the characters. She had opinions about everyone in every book, and she defended them like a lawyer.
But what surprised me most was that she listened. She remembered my exam dates. She asked how they went. She brought up things I’d mentioned once, in passing, three weeks before. I wasn’t used to that.
My mom loved me, but for as long as I could remember, she’d been holding our family together with bills spread across the kitchen table and worry lines on her face. Somewhere along the way, I’d learned to keep my problems to myself so I wouldn’t add to hers.
With Eleanor, I didn’t have to pretend I was fine.
In fourteen months, her children visited exactly twice. Both times they arrived carrying folders full of paperwork.
