For the first time since she was a little girl, Emma let the silence belong to them.
Her mother wiped under her eyes.
“We needed help,” she whispered.
Emma nodded once.
“And you had it.
For years.
What you didn’t have was gratitude. Or honesty.”
Her father exhaled hard, like a man who had lost an argument he didn’t think was supposed to happen.
“So that’s it?”
Emma looked around her apartment behind her.
The lamp by the couch.
The bookshelf she assembled herself.
The mug in the sink from that morning’s coffee.
A whole life that no longer trembled around their moods.
“That’s up to you,” she said.
“If you ever want a relationship with me, it won’t be this one.”
Her mother looked as if she wanted to ask what that meant, but Emma didn’t explain.
She had explained enough for one lifetime.
She closed the door gently.
Not in anger.
In finality.
