I held the phone to my ear a moment longer, listening to nothing. Then I lowered it slowly and looked out at the black water. My hands were trembling, but my face—my face did something surprising. It softened into a small, cold smile.
Because I didn’t cry. I didn’t yell. I didn’t call her back.
I remembered a hallway from seventeen years ago, and how I learned that the people who take from you often count on your shock. They count on the way good girls freeze.
I wasn’t seventeen anymore.
When I was seventeen, my mother died in five months.
Ovarian cancer moved through her like a thief in the night. One month we were sitting at our kitchen table in Mount Pleasant, arguing gently about whether I should apply out of state, and the next month she was too weak to lift her own coffee mug. I kept thinking we had time, because people always talk about fighting cancer. Like you can bargain with it if you’re brave enough.