Mom called on December twenty-seventh, quieter than I had ever heard her. She admitted she had never meant to deceive anyone, only to avoid a Christmas without noise. She said she had asked me to carry the holiday because I made it look easy, and she had never once asked what it cost.
I did not interrupt. I told her the number, thirteen thousand five hundred dollars, and that the money was never the hardest part. The hardest part was the absence of one sentence: thank you.
I set the phone down and listened to the wood stove tick. Twenty minutes later, Megan texted again, this time without a photo. Back in November, Mom…
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