“I built a life you couldn’t question, Jonathan. I thought if everything was flawless, no one would leave. Not like he did.
I thought control meant safety.”
“You lost us anyway,” I said, keeping my gaze on her. “And that was because you didn’t give us any choice.”
She didn’t deny it. For the first time in my life, my mother looked at me without trying to fix something.
Anna, who had said almost nothing during the visit, finally looked across the table. “Jonathan chose us. But we’re not a punishment.
And you don’t have to be the villain, Margot. Not unless you keep acting like one.”
My
There was no hug, no apology. That night, I found an envelope under the doormat. Inside was a music store gift card, and tucked behind it was a small folded note in my mother’s precise, slanted handwriting.
“For Aaron. Let him play because he wants to.”
I stood in the doorway for a long time, the note resting in my palm, the hallway light washing across the floor. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like something was broken.
It wasn’t closure, not yet. But maybe it was something better. Maybe it was the beginning of something new.
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