I listened to both messages once.
I did not call back.
Four weeks after that Saturday in October, I called my mother.
Margaret Green was 61 years old and had raised Natalie and me largely on her own after our father left when I was 11.
She was the kind of woman who held things together by sheer force of will. Practical, composed, and fiercely protective of her daughters in the particular way of mothers who have had to be both parents at once.
I drove to her house on a Sunday morning while Colin took Dylan to the park.
I sat at her kitchen table, the same table I had sat at my entire childhood, and I told her everything.
She did not interrupt.
She sat down her coffee cup and folded her hands and listened with the still, careful attention of someone who understands that what they are hearing is going to require them to hold something very heavy.
When I finished, the room was quiet.
“Natalie,” she said finally.
Not a question.
Just the name, said in a tone I had never heard from my mother before.
“Yes,” I said.
She was quiet for another long moment.
“How long?” she asked.
“A few months, as far as I can tell.”
She nodded slowly.
Then she looked at me directly and said, “What do you need from me?”
There was, again, that question.
The only one that matters.
“I need you to know,” I said. “And I need you to let me handle it my way.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
She reached across the table and put her hand over mine, and we sat there for a while without speaking.
My mother called Natalie that afternoon.
I don’t know exactly what was said.
My mother has never told me the full details of that conversation, and I have never asked.
What I know is that Natalie called me that evening, and this time I answered.
She was crying before I said a word.
I let her cry for a moment.
Then I said, “I’m not calling to fight, Natalie. I’m calling to tell you that I know everything and that I need some time before I’m ready to have any conversation with you.”
“Rebecca, I am so—”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
I hung up.