“You kept this?”
“Of course.”
She turned another page.
A paper flower.
A photograph of the three of us wearing matching pajamas.
A note I had written apologizing for breaking a lamp after blaming the cat.
Then she found a tiny folded card she had made as a teenager.
There was nothing expensive in the scrapbook.
Most of it was paper.
Some of it was barely recognizable anymore.
Mom had saved every piece.
Melissa looked at the pages for a long time.
Then her eyes moved toward the twenty-dollar bill still sticking out of yesterday’s birthday card.
“I understand.”
Mom sat beside her.
Melissa shook her head.
“No. I really understand.”
Then she looked at me.
“I didn’t want you finding those financial records because I knew what you would think.”
“What?”
“That everything I have happened because Mom paid for it.”
“I don’t think that.”
“I thought you would.”
Her voice became quieter.
“Every time Mom helped us, I told myself it was temporary. Then our situation improved and she kept telling me to forget about paying her back.”
She paused.
“After a while…”
“After a while what?”
Melissa looked at Mom.
“I stopped thinking about what helping us cost her.”
Mom reached for her hand.
Melissa started crying.
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s honest,” Mom said.
Melissa shook her head.
“You made receiving help so easy.”
Mom gave a sad smile.
“Maybe that was my mistake.”
“No.”
Melissa squeezed her hand.
“It was mine.”
She looked around Mom’s bedroom.
The older furniture.
The curtains Mom had repaired rather than replace because they were “still perfectly good.”
“I kept hearing you tell us you didn’t need anything,” Melissa said. “Eventually, I started believing you.”
She swallowed.
“Not just about money. About everything.”
Mom squeezed her hand.
“I’m sorry,” Melissa said.
“Not because I gave you twenty dollars.”
She wiped her face.
“I’m sorry because I started believing that since you never asked me for anything, there was nothing you needed from me.”
Mom pulled her into a hug.
I turned away for a moment because suddenly I was crying too.
When I looked back, Melissa had opened the scrapbook again.
Near the beginning was an old photograph of Mom beside a lake.
She looked maybe twenty-five.
