This time, I answered.
“Mom.”
His voice was different.
Quieter.
“I wanted to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I went to Dad’s grave.”
I said nothing.
“I hadn’t gone since the funeral.”
My throat tightened.
“What did you say to him?”
Austin breathed out slowly.
“I told him I was sorry.”
I looked at the ocean.
“Sorry for what?”
“For treating you like you were supposed to keep taking care of me.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The sentence I had waited forty years to hear.
But strangely, I didn’t need it anymore.
“I hope you meant it,” I said.
“I do.”
“And Chloe?”
“She understands now.”
I almost smiled.
“Does she?”
“She does.”
There was a long silence.
Then Austin whispered,
“Are you coming home?”
I looked around my cabin.
At the suitcase.
At the little vase of flowers I had bought that morning.
At Ernest’s photograph sitting beside the window.
“No.”
He went quiet.
“I mean… not yet.”
“Mom—”
“I love you, Austin.”
His voice cracked.
“I love you too.”
“But loving you doesn’t mean living for you.”
He started crying.
I let him.
Because sometimes tears were the first honest thing a person had left.
“I’ll see you when I’m ready,” I said.
Then I ended the call.
Six months later, the ship returned to Miami.
