“It was exhausting.”
My smile faded.
Mom stared at her hands.
“I thought every time he called Hawaii home, he was telling me this wasn’t.”
There it was.
“What did you do?”
“One night I told him if Hawaii was so perfect, maybe he should’ve stayed there. That’s when he told me about the foster home.”
Mom looked toward the blue chair.
“I’d thought I was competing with beaches and palm trees.”
Her voice softened.
“I found out I was competing with the first place he’d ever been sure dinner would include him.”
“Mom.”
“I apologized,” she said.
“Did he forgive you?”
“Immediately.”
“So you stopped him from going back?”
Her head snapped toward me.
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that I believed her.
“I spent years trying to get him to go.”
She suggested it when I was ten.
Dad said they couldn’t afford it.
She suggested it after his promotion.
He said work was too busy.
She suggested Hawaii for their twenty-fifth anniversary.
Dad said the people he’d known were probably gone.
“They weren’t,” Mom said.
“How do you know?”
“Christmas cards.”
I stared at her.
“They sent cards?”
“For years.”
“Did Dad answer?”
“Sometimes.”
