Chapter 13: Words in Daylight
When our son was six months old, Emma said Margaret’s name in therapy without whispering.
I attended one session at Emma’s request. The therapist asked what I feared most. I said I feared becoming the kind of man who needs a kick to see a basin. Emma cried. The therapist nodded as if that fear were a useful tool if handled carefully. We left with homework: continue the no-contact line, practice telling the short truth to friends—my mother was removed for violence and financial abuse; we don’t discuss her in front of our child. The short truth worked. People who needed a longer drama drifted. People who could hold a boundary stayed.
Aunt Ruth wrote a letter that was half apology for putting Margaret on the phone and half plea for holidays. I answered with a single paragraph: holidays were for people who did not strike our family. Ruth did not write again for a long time. When she did, it was a postcard with no agenda. I kept it. Small honest things deserved a place in the drawer beside the bank copies.
