Did you ask Mom?

I stared at the empty pie shell and the eggs I had in the fridge. Frowning, I did what came natural. I texted Mom.

Me: How many eggs do I need to make a quiche?

Mom: How many do you have?

Me: Five

Mom: That will work.

I pondered that for a moment. That will work. That implied five wasn’t the right number. Five wasn’t the number she would use. But five would work. Hmm. I opened the browser on my phone. Typed for a second. Perused the offerings.

Me: Mom, the internet says I need at least six.

Mom: Then go buy more eggs. Why did you text me if you were just going to google anyway?

Me: Because I miss you.

Mom: I miss you too, kid. And seriously, five will work.

I smiled a little.

Me: OK. I’ll use five. Remind me what else I need?

Mom: Can’t you just look at the internet?

Me: Mom…

Mom: **laughing emoji**

Mom: **more laughing emojis”

Mom: I couldn’t resist. OK. Here’s what you need.

I followed her instructions. Baked the quiche. Wished she was there to eat it with me. Isis my sheepadoodle ate her share—and then some. Her farts that night about suffocated me.

***

Kayla and I had lunch the next day as we always did on Saturdays. My older sister and I had become good friends over the last few years, quite the opposite of our life together up through our early twenties. I’d wanted everything she had. She’d wanted the freedom Mom and Dad gave me that she swore she never got. I’d envied how put together her life was. She’d ached for my creativity, my willingness to bounce when life dropped me on my ass. As it liked to do.

“Mark’s having an affair,” she said abruptly, not looking at me, choosing to studiously investigate the ingredients of her salad—the same Cobb salad she ordered every Saturday—instead.

I choked on the drink of iced tea I’d just taken and coughed and gagged until I could get my breath and say, “What?” I stared at her, open-mouthed, and then wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “Kayla, look at me.”

She did and tears hovered on the surface of her eyes, catching on her eyelashes before they trickled slowly down her cheeks. I handed her my disgusting napkin I’d just blown my nose into and she blotted her tears away. Then we both realized what I’d given her and grimaced at the same time. She pitched it onto the table away from both of us. I reached for it and shoved it into my handbag. Our server was a pleasant person. He didn’t deserve that.

“What … why …” I was stuck. I tried again. “Why do you think that?”

Mark and Kayla had been married for three years. They made it official just after she turned twenty-eight and just before I turned twenty-five, about a year after I decided Kayla was a loving, funny, intelligent woman that I was fortunate to call my sister. I wanted her to be happy—joyously, enviably happy (though I was mostly done with envying her). Mark seemed like the right guy. Today’s pronouncement blew my mind.

“I … I read some text messages on his phone.” She was avoiding my eyes again. “I know I shouldn’t have. But he was in the shower. His phone vibrated with a new message. I didn’t even really think about it. I just picked it up and glanced at the notification.” She looked up at me again. “Instead of a name, it just said it was from ‘Her.’ Can you believe that?” She growled and laughed and choked at the same time. “‘Her.’” She sighed. “I unlocked his phone and read the message stream. He’d been deleting them, I could tell, but they’d texted several times that day and I read them all.” Tears filled her eyes again. “They were making plans for that night. Talking about where they were going and … and about what they were going to do … to each other … when they got there.”

“Oh, Kayla…” I said, my heart squeezing for her as I imagined squeezing my hands—no, a rope—no, a garrote—around my brother-in-law’s neck, a neck I now realized was much scrawnier and longer and uglier than I’d realized before.

“Yeah,” she said, sniffing and digging in her bag. Pulling out a clean tissue she dabbed at her eyes (because my sister, God bless her, had still put on a full face of makeup, just like she did whenever she stepped out of the house, even though her world was imploding) and then discreetly blew her nose. She shrugged. “I haven’t talked to him about it yet. Haven’t felt up to it.”

“When did this all happen?”

“Tuesday. He’s been having regular ‘meetings’ on Tuesday nights for a while.” She laughed derisively. “Now I know why he always cleaned up before he went to them AND when he got home.”

I wished she had called me when she found out. Or even just packed a bag and came to stay with me right away. But I knew my sister. I knew she needed to think and to process and to plan.

“Do you know what you’re going to do? You know I have an extra room. You know you can stay with me.”

She nodded and gave me a soft smile. “I know, Kam. I appreciate that. You know I do.” I nodded and she continued. “But he’s going to move out. He doesn’t know it yet. But he is. I love our house. I can afford to keep it. He cheated. He can leave.”

“Okay, if you’re sure,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t have said it out loud if she wasn’t.

“I’m sure.”

“Have you talked to Mom yet?” I asked. That would have been my first reaction. It always had been. Talk to Mom.

Kayla shook her head. Picked up her phone. She stared at it for a beat then put it down. “I keep thinking about it, but it’s hard.”

“She’ll understand, Kay. She’ll support you.”

“I know,” Kayla said immediately. “That’s not what I mean …”

I knew what she meant. “It gets easier, the more you do it,” I said softly.

“Yeah …” She drew out the word. “That’s what scares me, actually. I’m afraid to get too used to it. I’m afraid it’ll make some things that much harder.”

“It hasn’t for me. Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet,” she said softly.

It was my turn to look away. I’d stopped lying to my sister quite a while ago. Funny, how easy it was to get right back on that bike.

***

I texted as soon as I got home.

Me: Have you talked to Kayla today?

Mom: No

Me: How long’s it been since you did?

I figured maybe a week or so, but the longer I watched the bubbles appear and then disappear, appear and then disappear a few times, the more I wondered. Finally, she sent a response.

Mom: It’s been a while.

Me: How long, Mom?

Mom: Almost five years

I stared at my phone. That couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be. I mean, Kayla had never told me she’d talked to Mom since … well, in the last five years, but I thought she had. At least a little. Once in a while. Birthdays. Christmas. When she and Mark got married?

Mom: Kameron? You still there?

Me: Yeah I’m here

I felt like the ground had shifted a little. I wasn’t sure where to stand.

Me: What about Dad? You’ve talked to him, right?

I didn’t even really think I needed to ask this. I mean, of course she’d talked to Dad. Surely they were talking all the time, right? They loved each other so much I just couldn’t imagine—

Mom: No

Me: No? Not at all either?

Mom: Not at all

My thumbs hovered over my phone but I had no idea what to say. How was this possible? Why was I the only one still talking to Mom?

Me: I know they know they can. Kayla and I just talked about it. WHY AREN’T THEY?

My hands were sweating so I laid down my phone and wiped my palms on my jeans. My breathing was shallow and rapid, my heartbeat racing as if I’d just run a few stair laps. I sat down and put my head between my knees, concentrating on slowing everything down—my breathing, my heart rate, my thoughts, my fears. I didn’t want real reality to crash in on me again. I liked the unreal reality I had been living in for the last five years much better.

The real reality was too hard to think about. To get used to. To manage. I didn’t want to. It hurt to go there. To live there. And I didn’t have to so why would I?

My phone dinged.

Mom: We talked before

That wasn’t a complete thought. She wasn’t done. Why didn’t she finish the thought? My heart hammered against my chest again. Then the bubbles appeared.

Mom: We talked five years ago, remember? As a family. We talked about the possibilities, the options, and we agreed we’d each do what was best for us. They’re doing what’s best for them, Kam.

How? I wondered. How could not talking to Mom for all this time be best? I mean, I remembered the conversation. Of course, I did. But I never thought they’d just let her go. I couldn’t let her go. How could they? And how had I not figured it out in all this time?

Mom: Kam?

Me: I’m here. Trying to get my head around it.

Mom: Sweetheart, I think it’s time.

No! I wanted to scream. I stared at the screen. She did not mean that. She wasn’t getting ready to say what I’d been afraid she’d say ever since she …

Mom: When they told us, there at the end at the Hospice, that we could do this. That we could stay in touch. That it would be easy. I wondered then if easy was good. I wondered if it was the right thing to do. I wondered if it would really be healing and help us all move on like they said it would.

She stopped typing for a minute and I read and reread that message while the bubbles percolated at the bottom of my screen.

Mom: I just felt so bad about leaving you all so soon, you know? There were so many things I was going to miss, and I thought you all—especially you and Kayla—still really needed me.

WE DO! I shouted in my mind. I DO!

Mom: But I think this hasn’t been healthy for you, Kam. And it’s kept me rooted. We both need to grow, sweetheart. Death is truly part of life. You need to fully live your life, and I need to let you go to do that.

I sobbed, gripping my phone like the last handhold on a sheer cliff face.

Me: Please Mom

It took me so long to type those two words because my hands were shaking so bad.

Mom: I love you, Kammie. I love you and your dad and Kayla so much. That will never change. That will never end.

I doubled over, wrapping my arms around myself as grief threatened to pull me under completely. I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t lose her twice.

Me: Mom please don’t go.

I wiped my eyes and nose with the sleeve of my shirt and stared at my phone. No bubbles. Nothing.

Me: Mom

Me: Mom!

Me: MOM!

I stared at my phone for an hour. A solid hour. Willing those bubbles to appear. They never did.

It had been so easy to reach out to her. Even though we’d buried her five years ago, even though the cancer had eaten her down to skin and bones, even though I’d felt sliced in half as I watched them throw dirt on her coffin, knowing I’d never see her again in this lifetime, all I’d had to do for all these years was pick up my phone and text her and there she was.

It had been so easy.

Until now.

Now I had to do the hardest thing I’d ever had to do … again. I had to live in the real reality where Mom was gone. Unreachable. Untouchable. Gone.