She continued to talk about her ex. I let her ramble on. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the guy. I just knew I had to be careful around him. We each wore a mask of pretence when we were around one another. I would initiate conversations about sporting events that I had never watched, stuff that I had seen in the sport page headlines.

Words with him were always difficult. His eyes never met anyone’s. He was always looking east or west of the person he was speaking to, or at a skyline that he created above their forehead. He was openly less than tolerant of my family members. I was happy that she had left someone who, I thought, had never acknowledged that she lived under the same roof as him.

Finally, she asked me, “What’s new?” A hard question, especially when trying to recover from the shock of an unexpected phone call. “What’s new?” puts the receiver of the question into a place of obligation, turning their life into a lineup of what was most important before they answered the phone.

I found myself wanting to say something incredible, but my mind was muddled with the details of earlier in the day when my middle son had come over to talk about wanting to leave his lovely and long-time girlfriend. This was something that I didn’t want to share with Sister. There was nothing in the world I felt less like talking about than my Lance. He was not a topic to lead with. Not yet and perhaps not ever. Tenacity and trust are things that must be earned.

The only way to answer the question was to make something up, to find something that lay on the periphery of my life and bring it forward. Now was the time to find that safe spot. I talked about university and how happy I was to be there. How invigorating it was to be the old lady student in the classroom, to be around young people, to read and learn. I talked about how long I had waited to do that. I was always putting the people I loved best first. Something she had intentionally forgotten to do even though we had been raised in the same home where it was taught.

There had always been someone else who came first. Someone else who needed my attention. Bills to pay, children to raise and that eternal drive to “get ahead.” Always hoping for that financial nest egg. But those eggs broke every fiscal quarter in my household. Then one day, I decided to do something that I had always dreamed of, and that dream had come true. I made myself sound like a hero on the phone. Sister cooed her approval and told me that I was brave. Perhaps I needed that reassurance.