She looked toward Ruth.
“I sounded exactly like my mother, didn’t I?”
Ruth nodded sadly.
“Yes, sweetheart. You did.”
Mom began crying harder.
“I promised I’d never become her.”
She looked at me.
“When I was nineteen, I promised Ruth I would never treat my children the
way Mom treated me.”
I stood motionless.
“But I did,” she whispered. “I treated you exactly the way she treated me.”
My own eyes filled with tears.
Mom continued.
“I remember your ninth birthday, Olivia.”
Her voice broke.
“I remember stopping you from taking the cake. I remember telling you that you hadn’t paid for it.”
I couldn’t speak.
“And I remember thinking that you needed to learn not to ask for things.”
She covered her mouth.
“That’s what my mother believed about me. And somehow, I taught you the same terrible lesson.”
For years, I’d imagined what it would feel like to hear my mother acknowledge what she’d done.
