I Gave Him Freedom, He Came Crawling Back in Tears novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: I Told You So

My mother arrived at Marla's front door at eight on Saturday morning, in her camel coat and her pearl earrings, holding a casserole.

She had driven two hours from Cincinnati for this.

Marla looked at her through the screen and said, "I'm the friend. You can come in, but you will wipe your feet."

My mother wiped her feet.

I sat her at the kitchen table, where nothing sharp or heavy was in reach, and Marla went to the garden with a cup of coffee and made it very obvious that she was not listening.

"You look thin," my mother said.

"I'm fine."

"You look gray. Is Dexter feeding you?"

"I don't live with Dexter. That's why you drove here."

My mother set the casserole in the middle of the table.

"I told you," she said. "I told you ten years ago that a man who plays guitar in bars would leave you the minute he got bored. Your father said it too."

"He sold his guitars."

"That was a gesture."

"It was nine thousand dollars," I said. "He sold them the week you told me to stop being dramatic."

She looked at her hands.

She had good hands, soft and ringed, and I knew them better than I knew my own.

"I never said that."

"You said it in your kitchen, while I stood there with no hair."

"I was frightened, Willa."

"Of what?"

"Of losing you slowly, and paying for it." She said it quietly and without any shame. "Your father said we'd be pouring money into a hole. I didn't argue. It seemed like the sensible thing."

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