“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Daina said, her voice full of steel even though her knees feel like Jell-O.
Her mother crossed her hands in her lap, looking demure and sedate. Daina knows that was an illusion. “It’s a lot of things you might not wanna talk about, but sometimes we gotta.”
“I don’t have to,” Daina said defiantly.
Her mother raised her left eyebrow and pursed her lips. “What year were you born, again?”
“Huh?”
“‘I thought it was ’85 the way you acting-”
Daina cut her mother off; something she never normally dared. “I don’t have to tell you everything just ‘cause you’re my mother.”
“I agree.”
Those two words evaporated the words sitting ready like spears on Daina’s tongue. “Huh?”
Her mother smiled at that. “I’m not asking you to tell me what happened to Shawn ‘cause I’m your mother, I’m asking you to tell me what happened between you and Shawn ‘cause holding onto the hurt stops you from healing.”
“I-”
“Your daddy taught me that,” she said, tucking the small stack of photographs in her hand back into the box. She tapped them twice with the pads of her fingers and then looked up at Daina. “And now I’m teaching you.”
“I-”
That one word stuck in Daina’s throat before. Her lips were parted and grew dry as she inhaled and exhaled in confusion, her gaze locked on her mother’s. She waited for her mother to say something but instead sat in awkward silence, watching as the serenity on her mother’s face never wavered, maybe even deepened.
Daina waited a few moments longer before she accepted that her mother would not be volunteering more.
“He cheated,” Daina admitted in a rush.
She’d promised herself not to admit this failure to anyone, but here she was, laying herself bare to someone who surely couldn’t understand.
But she watched as her mother nodded sagely. ‘Was it the first time?”
Daina gasped and answered before she could think. “No.”
Her mother pursed her lips and nodded again. “And so you left?”
“Yes,” Daina said weakly.
“Good,” her mother said with an approving nod. “We should order lunch.”
“I- Daina said again. “Okay?”
“Okay,” her mother said and then rolled her eyes. “Let’s go ask your daddy what he wants. Lord knows he’s gonna take forever to decide anyway.”