When Elaine’s daughter suddenly stops visits, she’s left to wonder what went wrong. The distance grows, the silence stretches… until a chance encounter shatters everything she thought she knew.
In the fallout, Elaine must confront an unbearable truth… and decide how far a mother is willing to go to make things right.
If you had asked me a year ago, I would have told you my daughter and I were close.
Nina Rose is 25 years old now. She’s beautiful, independent, compassionate, and whip-smart.
She moved out at 18, eager to taste her own life, and I was proud of her for it.
I missed her terribly, of course, but we stayed close. She would visit often for birthdays, Sunday dinners, and the occasional movie night. She’d always leave behind something, a jacket, even her favorite noodle bowl once, and with that, she’d leave her laughter lingering in the walls.
And then, slowly, she stopped coming over.
At first, it was just Richard’s birthday last June.
She called the day before to say she couldn’t make it.
“Sorry, Mom,” she said. “There’s this project at work… I’m swamped.”
I hadn’t thought much of it.
Everyone misses one now and then.
Then came my own birthday in August. I bought Nina’s favorite key lime pie and chilled a bottle of sparkling apple cider. Richard grilled steaks out back while I kept checking the clock, certain she was just running late.
Nina never came.
She called the next day.
“I wasn’t feeling great,” she explained.
“I didn’t want to risk bringing anything to you, you know?”
It sounded thoughtful, responsible even. But her voice was off. Rushed.
Like she was apologetic in a way that felt practiced. Distant, like she wasn’t really on the other end of the call at all.
By Thanksgiving, the excuses had multiplied.
“I’ve been so tired, Mom.”
“Max and I have plans with his family this weekend. It’s his niece’s first birthday.”
“Maybe…
next week?”
Each one came with a different tone. Sometimes sheepish, sometimes robotic, but none of them sounded like my daughter.
She didn’t come to Christmas dinner. She didn’t call on New Year’s.
By February, I’d stopped setting her place at the table. I told myself it was just temporary. That adults go through phases, and that it was okay.
That maybe Nina would realize that she still needed her mother, and she’d call out of the blue one Sunday, and everything would fall back into place.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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