He did not defend our mother.
That deserves to be recorded.
He did not say she meant well.
He did not say you know how she is.
He didn’t use any of the sentences that had upholstered my childhood.
He had stopped carrying her messages the day he sat crying on my porch.
He looked at Marin, already falling asleep against my shoulder.
Then he asked something nobody else in my family ever had.
“Can I come see her? No envelopes. Just an uncle.”
Just an uncle.
Twenty-nine years old.
