“I get it, Mother,” I say. “I should have called you for you to do nothing and then to tell me that you told me so.”

“I wouldn’t have said that,” she huffs out. “I also heard about the party.”

I close my eyes. Of course, she did. “Shocking,” I say sarcastically. “Who filled you in on that, Mother? Couldn’t have been Mary Ellen.” I know that whoever was in that room at the party would not have called my mother. “So when did he call you?”

“I saw him yesterday,” she says, and my stomach sinks. “He was in the area.”

“I bet,” I mumble. He was in the area a lot when we were living in a tiny trailer on the other side of the town, too.

Of course he would sneak over at night and then leave before the sun came up. I remember the first time I caught him walking out of my mother’s room with his shirt over his arm and carrying his shoes. He looked at me and sneered and then turned back to look at my mother who was walking out in her purple satin kimono tied lightly around her waist and her hair all disheveled. She nodded at him, and he walked out, then she took one look at me and said that what happened in our house was private and to keep it as such. I was nine. I didn’t understand it then, and when I was twelve, I asked her if she even liked Mary Ellen. She gasped and said that she was her best friend. When I asked how she could do this to her, all she said was, “Everyone has needs, Savannah.”

“It doesn’t matter that he was here. What matters is that you make sure it doesn’t get out to anyone else,” she hisses out now. “You signed that paper. Don’t forget,” she reminds me.

“Oh, I know, Mother. I remember signing it. I also remember you assuring him that I wouldn’t tell a soul,” I finally snap. “I also remember when he forced you to move, thinking that I would go with you.”

“He didn’t force me, Savannah,” she says, blowing out again. “I decided that it would be a good time to start over.” I shake my head.

“I guess it helps that he pays for your apartment now, and that you don’t have to work anymore,” I remind her. “That helped you decide for sure.”

“I worked my whole life!” she shouts. “You think it was easy what I did? I had no choice. I was a mother.”

I snap, “A mother?” I shake my head. “Clearly, I am remembering it very different.”

“Of course you are,” she sneers, and I can see her rolling her eyes. “I did the best that I could.”