“I’m trying not to leave something unfinished.”
My stomach tightened. “What?”
“I’m not trying to prove anything.”
“I’m not ready to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t only my story.”
That stopped me.
“Whose story is it?”
Mom picked up her purse.
“You’ll know when you need to.”
“Whose story is it?”
Two months later, she was gone.
I still believed those Saturday trips had simply been Mom’s way of feeling alive again.
Then Connor found me at the funeral.
“My mother’s name is Diane,” he said. “That’s where Frances was going.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“They knew each other before we were born.”
That’s where Frances was going.”
A cold feeling moved through me.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I think Diane should.”
“Connor, I just buried my mother. I’m done with half-answers.”
He looked toward the crowded room.
“Then let me bring her to you.”
“I think Diane should.”
“Tonight.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Tonight? Don’t you want to rest after the funeral?”
“If Mom hid this from me until she died, I’m not waiting another day.”
An hour later, Connor returned with a silver-haired woman I’d never seen before.
She stepped into Mom’s living room, looked at the family photographs on the wall, and whispered one name.
“Don’t you want to rest after the funeral?”
“Mike.”
My uncle.
“Frances and I were best friends in high school,” Diane said.
“Mom never mentioned you.”
“There was a boy named Sam. Frances loved him, but he chose me.”
I glanced at Connor. “Your father?”
“Mom never mentioned you.”
He nodded.
“Mom loved Dad.”
“She did,” Diane said. “She just never stopped believing I’d taken something from her.”
“What does Uncle Mike have to do with any of this?”
Diane’s expression tightened.
“Years later, Mike and I fell in love.”
I stared at her. “My Uncle Mike?”
“Years later, Mike and I fell in love.”
“Yes.”
Mike had been at every holiday when I was little. He later moved away, married, and died in a car crash years before Dad.
Connor spoke quietly.
“I was nine. Mike taught me baseball. Then one Saturday, he stopped coming.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Then one Saturday, he stopped coming.”
“Frances told him she couldn’t accept us,” Diane said. “She made it clear that staying with me would cost him his place in the family.”
I stood.
“No.”
“Mia…”
“Mom loved Mike.”
Diane looked at me carefully.
“People can love someone and still hurt them.”
“Frances told him she couldn’t accept us.”
I looked at Connor. “Did Mike tell you this?”
“No. Mom did, years later.”
“So I’m supposed to believe my mom wrecked your relationship because she was jealous of something that happened before I was even born?”
Diane didn’t flinch.
“I’m not asking you to believe me because I said it.”
“Did Mike tell you this?”
“Then why come here?”
“Because Frances asked me to.”
Connor stepped forward.
“Those rides were to Mom’s house, Mia,” Connor reminded me. “Frances wanted to make amends.”
“After 40 years?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“After 40 years?”
Diane answered quietly. “She was ashamed. She thought if you saw that side of her, you’d never look at her the same.”
I shook my head.
“You don’t know my mother.”
“I knew a version of her you didn’t.”
That was the sentence that broke my patience.
“Please leave.”
“I knew a version of her you didn’t.”
Connor started to speak.
“No. Both of you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because grief can make the truth feel cruel, even when no one means it that way.”
I opened the door.
They left.
The second Connor’s truck disappeared, I went upstairs.
“You keep saying that.”
If they were lying, Mom’s things would prove it.
I pulled her old wooden box from the closet and sat on the floor.
Photographs spilled into my lap.
Mom and Diane at 17. At a dance. At a picnic. Sitting on the hood of a car, laughing.
“Why did you never tell me about her?” I whispered.
Then I found Sam.
In one photograph, Mom was looking at him.
If they were lying, Mom’s things would prove it.
