I picked up my phone again.<\/p>\n
This time, I didn't put it down.<\/p>\n
I sat at the kitchen table with Arthur's photograph beside me and the folded paper beneath my hand.<\/p>\n
The house was quiet.<\/p>\n
I could hear the refrigerator humming and the faint ticking of the clock on the wall.<\/p>\n
Those sounds had been part of my life for years.<\/p>\n
Usually, I barely noticed them.<\/p>\n
That morning, they seemed to mark the passing of time while I sat there deciding whether to call my own son.<\/p>\n
It shouldn't have been such a difficult decision.<\/p>\n
Julian was my child.<\/p>\n
I had raised him.<\/p>\n
I had watched him grow from a boy who needed help with almost everything into a man who had a home and family of his own.<\/p>\n
I had always wanted him to feel that he could speak honestly with me.<\/p>\n
Yet I had spent years worrying that honesty might cost me something.<\/p>\n
If I told him I was hurt, would he think I was attacking Candice?<\/p>\n
If I questioned a decision she had made, would he assume I was trying to interfere in his marriage?<\/p>\n
If I stood firm about my own home, would he believe I was being selfish?<\/p>\n
I didn't know.<\/p>\n
And the fact that I didn't know made me sad.<\/p>\n
I had never expected my son to agree with me about everything.<\/p>\n
That wasn't what I wanted.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to listen.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to understand that I could love him and still disagree with the way something had been handled.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to see that being his mother did not mean I had stopped being a person with my own wishes and boundaries.<\/p>\n
Those things should not have been difficult to explain.<\/p>\n
But I had made them difficult by waiting so long to say them.<\/p>\n
I looked at the paper again.<\/p>\n
The questions were simple.<\/p>\n
Why had my belongings been packed?<\/p>\n
Who had decided to move them?<\/p>\n
What did Magnolia Gardens mean?<\/p>\n
Had Julian known?<\/p>\n
I didn't need to ask him to defend me.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to tell him what conclusion to reach.<\/p>\n
I only needed him to answer honestly.<\/p>\n
I pressed his number.<\/p>\n
The phone rang.<\/p>\n
I looked at Arthur's photograph while I waited.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I almost ended the call.<\/p>\n
The old instinct was still there.<\/p>\n
The instinct to avoid trouble before it began.<\/p>\n
I could tell myself that it was too early.<\/p>\n
I could wait until later.<\/p>\n
I could decide that the morning had already been difficult enough.<\/p>\n
But that would have been another excuse.<\/p>\n
So I let the phone continue ringing.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to make a decision about Julian's knowledge before giving him a chance to speak.<\/p>\n
And I wasn't going to let my fear of his reaction prevent me from asking what I needed to know.<\/p>\n
I kept the phone against my ear.<\/p>\n
The house remained quiet around me.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the hallway, where the empty place on my nightstand was waiting.<\/p>\n
Then I looked back at Arthur's photograph.<\/p>\n
I thought about the woman I had been before his death.<\/p>\n
I thought about the woman I had become afterward.<\/p>\n
I had spent years learning how to manage my grief.<\/p>\n
Now I was learning that grief had not made me less capable of protecting myself.<\/p>\n
I could still think clearly.<\/p>\n
I could still ask questions.<\/p>\n
I could still make decisions that other people might not like.<\/p>\n
The phone continued ringing.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what Julian would say when he answered.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether he would be surprised by my questions or irritated that I had asked them.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether Candice had already spoken to him about the locks, the suitcases, or the box.<\/p>\n
All I knew was that I needed to stop guessing.<\/p>\n
I needed to hear his answer.<\/p>\n
And I needed to be prepared to listen, even if what he told me was not what I wanted to hear.<\/p>\n
The ringing stopped.<\/p>\n
I held the phone a little tighter.<\/p>\n
For one brief moment, there was silence on the line.<\/p>\n
Then I heard my son's voice.<\/p>\n
I straightened in my chair.<\/p>\n
I looked at the photograph beside my hand.<\/p>\n
And I began with the simplest thing I could say.<\/p>\n
"Julian, I need to ask you something about this morning."<\/p>\n
I paused.<\/p>\n
I could feel my old habit trying to soften the question before I had even finished asking it.<\/p>\n
I didn't let it.<\/p>\n
I continued.<\/p>\n
"Did you know Candice had packed my belongings?"<\/p>\n
The question hung between us.<\/p>\n
I waited for him to answer.<\/p>\n
I didn't accuse him.<\/p>\n
I didn't tell him what I believed.<\/p>\n
I didn't explain the locks again or defend the decision I had made at 9:15.<\/p>\n
I simply waited.<\/p>\n
Because whatever Julian said next, I needed to hear it clearly.<\/p>\n
For the first time that morning, I wasn't trying to make the conversation comfortable before it had even begun.<\/p>\n
I was asking for the truth.<\/p>\n
I picked up my phone again. This time, I didn't put it down. I sat at the kitchen table with Arthur's photograph beside me and the folded paper beneath my … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39736,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39716\/revisions\/39736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}