I looked down
before Kayla saw my expression.
Part 5 — The Mother Who Suddenly Needed Daughters
Kayla sat down as though she intended to stay.
She began explaining herself.
Not apologizing.
Explaining.
She talked about being young.
About grief.
About how difficult life had been after my son died.
Some of that was true.
She had been young.
She had been grieving.
I had never denied that.
Then she said something that made my blood turn hot.
“Your father couldn’t give me the kind of future I wanted, and after he died, I felt completely trapped.”
My son had been gone for twenty years.
He had loved her.
He had worked long hours.
He had adored those babies.
And somehow, standing in my house two decades later, she still found a way to blame him for the life she’d abandoned.
I started to speak.
Jennifer beat me to it.
