Through that day, I slowly understood that I was in many ways repeating Mother’s story. She’d taught me so well that I hadn’t even understood I was being taught, and the lesson was this: Choose the proper and appropriate way to protect yourself. I was now withering in a marriage and a life that had somehow killed the most precious quadrant of my heart—the part that felt emotion. If I put myself on automatic, there would be no wanting or needing, and the sheltered life would take on its predestined course that required no choosing or action on my part.

In reading Mother’s story, spread as it was through pages and years, I saw that she had done this: When her heart shattered, when she broke and the pain was too much to bear, she’d shut her soul and made the one decision that never required another decision. If her heart was quieted, it could never again bother her with its wants and needs and longings.

My soul dropped to its knees, and I understood that if I wanted to live this very same way (Mother’s way), I could: I was well on her path. But I had a choice. A real and definitive moment where I could choose love or safety; deadness or pain; risk or shelter. I wasn’t sure how to choose or what I’d decide to do, but something had to be done before my heart was closed tight for good and all, before the drowning of my soul was complete.

My heart returned to a singular time—when I was with Hutch O’Brien.

After Hutch and I met at the bar that night, we were inseparable. Sleep and food seemed inconsequential, almost foolish. We believed we were the rare and lucky ones, the ones that found the Person that completed the incomplete parts of our souls. We’d finished each other’s sentences. We’d read the same books. We’d listened to the same music.

I finally brought Hutch home to meet my parents, and maybe that’s where the demise began, because nothing stays the same. Ever. Especially after meeting my mother.

Hutch and Mother met the Thanksgiving of my junior year. The dining room table of our family home was set, flashing with the family silver and Wedgwood china, the candles like those silly New Year’s Eve sparklers we lit as children. Hutch sat in the library watching football with Dad while Mother and I peeled the potatoes. Nat King Cole sang on the radio, where holiday songs dominated the airwaves.

“So, Ellie, where are his people from?” Mother asked.

“Linden, Alabama,” I said.

She threw potato peels into the trash. “I’ve never heard of that place.”

“It’s a really small town outside Mobile.”

“What does his daddy do?”