“Why didn’t you tell her?”

Mom had no answer.

Neither did Linda need one.

The Baby in the Yellow Blanket

Linda turned toward me.

“She talked about you, too.”

I stared at her.

“Me?”

“At first, not kindly.”

Mom immediately looked uncomfortable.

Linda held up a hand.

“Rachel deserves the truth.”

I nodded.

“Tell me.”

Linda pointed to the picture of Mom holding me.

“To Susan, that picture wasn’t a baby. It was evidence.”

“Evidence of what?”

“That life in this house kept going without her.”

I looked at my infant face.

“I didn’t even know she existed.”

“She eventually understood that too.”

Linda smiled faintly.

“Later, she stopped calling you ‘that baby.’”

“What did she call me?”

“Her little sister.”

That landed harder than I expected.

“She called me that?”

“All the time near the end.”

Linda told me Susan wondered what I looked like, where I lived, whether I had children, whether I laughed like Dorothy.

“She wanted to meet you.”

I looked at Mom.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?”

Mom rubbed the edge of the photograph.

“Because every year I waited made the story harder to explain.”

I didn’t answer.

Linda handed Mom the envelope.

Mom finally took it.

Then she asked, “Did she leave you a message for me?”

Linda nodded.

“One question.”

Mom held the envelope against her chest.

“Ask me.”

Linda looked straight at her.

“Did you ever think Susan didn’t want you anymore?”

Mom answered without hesitation.

“Every day.”

Linda started crying.

Mom reached toward her.

“Why are you crying?”

Linda shook her head.

“Because that was the answer she needed.”

Mom stared at her.

“Needed for what?”

“She spent fifty years thinking you knew she wanted you to come after her.”

Mom’s voice cracked.

“I didn’t know.”

Linda nodded.

“She didn’t know you were waiting either.”

Mom looked down at the envelope.

“We wasted fifty years.”

Linda squeezed her hand.

“You lost fifty years. That doesn’t mean what came before them was fake.”

Six Groceries

The manager had quietly moved customers around us while we talked.

Eventually Mom looked at the six groceries still sitting beside the register.

“I suppose I should pay before you close the store around me.”

Linda laughed through her tears.

“That would probably help.”

She unlocked the register.

Mom stood slowly. I picked up her wallet from where I had placed it on the bench and handed it back to her.

She inserted her card the wrong way.

Pulled it out.

Tried again.

Her hand was shaking badly now.

“I’m sorry. I’m doing it again.”

Linda frowned.

“Doing what?”

“Making people wait.”

Linda reached across the counter and steadied the card reader.

“Dorothy, look at me.”

Mom did.

“Nobody important is in a hurry.”

Mom’s eyes filled.

Linda kept her hand on the machine.

“Take all the time you need.”

Mom inserted the card.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

Linda packed the six groceries herself.

The woman who had insulted Mom earlier was gone. I hadn’t even noticed when she left.

Mom tucked Susan’s letter into her purse, but she kept the old photograph in her hand.

Linda asked her supervisor if she could take her break and walked outside with us.

The afternoon sun was bright over the parking lot. Cars moved slowly through the lanes while Mom stood beside my car, looking at the picture of herself holding me more than fifty years earlier.

She turned it over.

The baby Dorothy needed more than me.

Mom ran her thumb across Susan’s handwriting.

“She got this wrong.”

Linda stood beside her.

“She eventually knew that.”

Mom shook her head.

“No. I needed both girls. I was just scared I couldn’t be enough for both.”

Linda looked at her.

“Then say it again.”

Mom blinked.

“What?”

“Say what you would have said if she were standing here.”

Mom looked at the photograph.

Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Susan, you were never the child I could live without.”

Linda closed her eyes.

Mom reached for her hand.

We stood there beside a shopping cart with six groceries inside it while my eighty-three-year-old mother held the hand of the daughter of the girl she had once raised.

Her fingers were still trembling.

They had trembled when she searched for her wallet. They had trembled while a stranger complained she was taking too long. They trembled now as she held onto the last living piece of a relationship she thought she had lost forever.

But Linda didn’t pull away.

She tightened her hand around Mom’s instead.

And this time, nobody told my mother to hurry.