Fifteen years earlier, I’d stood in our hallway holding our nine-month-old, watching Monica zip two suitcases shut.
“You CAN’T give me the life I want,” she’d said. “But Victor can. A new car. The Maldives. Do you understand the kind of life he gives me? The kind of life I deserve.”
Victor was her boss. The man she’d been ch*ating on me with for months.
Then she slammed the door, and she was gone.
I was thirty-four years old with six daughters — Audrey, the eldest, and five more stair-stepped down to a baby who would never remember her mother’s face.
I worked double shifts.
I learned the difference between ten different shades of pink.
I braided hair I didn’t know how to braid, watching videos at midnight until I got it right.
I never missed a single school performance. Not one.
I was always there.
And in fifteen years, Monica never called, never wrote, never sent so much as a birthday card.
