Her daughter, my cousin Sophie, was my built-in sister and best friend. We were only a year apart and inseparable.
The pain dulled,
but it never disappeared.
Rebecca saw it all — the slammed doors, the sarcastic jabs, the empty fridge, and the silent dinners.
Sophie was my lifeline when I felt like I was drowning in the silence of a home that didn’t want me.
Over the years, Linda and I maintained a bare-minimum relationship that was cold and distant. We sent birthday texts, made calls on Mother’s Day, and maybe a holiday dinner if Rebecca guilt-tripped us hard enough.
But we weren’t close. We were polite in that empty, brittle way that strangers are.
Still, Linda is my mother, and some part of me loved her, anyway. Maybe not the usual way, but in a quiet, stubborn way that said, “You gave me life and that matters, even if you couldn’t give me love.”
But we weren’t close.
Then I met Adam.
