When you were little, the Meridian was just another story about a version of me you did not need yet.
When you became older, telling you became harder because I would have had to explain why I had waited.
I was embarrassed.
Not by the theater.
By myself.
I had been entrusted with something I loved, and I had walked away from it because there were bills to pay and people who needed me.
It took me too long to understand that choosing you was not the same as failing everything else.
I stopped reading.
I pressed the page against the table.
For four years after my mother died, I had carried a quiet anger toward her.
Not a big anger.
Nothing anyone saw.
Just a small selfish one.
Why hadn’t she saved more money?
Why hadn’t she planned better?
Why had every problem become mine the moment the hospital called to tell me she was gone?
