I thought about what he had told me all those years ago. That my mother wanted something more. That she’d looked at the life they had, at me, at him, and decided it wasn’t enough.
I’d spent my whole life quietly believing I had been part of what Mom was running from. That I hadn’t been enough to make her stay.
I took a breath, then knocked. Moments later, the front door opened.
Mom came out onto the porch with a cardigan pulled around her shoulders and stopped the moment she saw my father and me.
I hadn’t been enough to make her stay.
Dad’s breath went out of him all at once.
“Miranda?”
Mom looked at him, and then she looked at me, and her hand went to her mouth.
Nobody moved for a long moment. Then Mom came slowly down the porch steps, and we stood on the cracked sidewalk and looked at each other in the pale morning light.
“You took her from me, Dave,” she snapped at Dad. “You disappeared with my child like I didn’t exist.”
“You took her from me, Dave.”
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