Then my mother found out.
I should have known it would happen quickly.
In my family, secrets never stayed secrets. Not because anyone cared enough to ask how you were doing, but because information was considered a family resource. Something everyone had a right to access. Something that belonged to the group, not the person who earned it.
My mother called me on a Tuesday afternoon while I was finishing paperwork at the clinic.
“Your brother told me about the cabin,” she said.
No hello.
No how are you.
Just the sentence.
I stared at the patient notes in front of me, the same notes I had read three times without absorbing a single word.
“He did?”
“Yes. And I think it’s wonderful.”
The pause that followed should have warned me.
My mother never said something was wonderful unless she was about to explain how wonderful it was for everyone else.
