Or her favorite coffee mug with the chip in the handle. Or even the silly ceramic frog I made in sixth grade. But Becca never touched any of it.
She paused before packing each photo frame. She ran her fingers along the glass like she was touching something priceless. She folded my mother’s cardigans gently, like she was swaddling a baby.
To be honest, it annoyed me how careful she was. Like she had a right to grieve the woman who had been mine. “She hated clutter,” Becca said on Thursday morning, stacking my mother’s crossword books into a neat pile.
“And she loved scones. Your aunt Cathy dropped some off early this morning. They’re in the kitchen, Nat.”
“She did,” I replied, my arms crossed.
“But she also never threw anything away. I bet all of those crossword books are finished.”
“They are,” Becca said, giving me a small, distant smile. “She told me they made her feel accomplished.
Finishing them, I mean. Maybe that’s why she kept them.”
“She told you that?” I asked. “Natalie, your mother told me a lot of things,” she said simply.
That stung more than it should have. “Like what?” I asked, trying not to sound defensive. “Like how she hated how quiet the house felt after you moved out,” Becca said, looking up from the pile.
“And how she’d open your room door just to see the messy stack of boxes and books that you left behind. She hated clutter, sure. But she loved seeing yours.
I always thought that maybe she…
maybe she thought you’d come back for those things.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what words to use. “She never told you that?” Becca asked, her voice softer.
“No,” I said, staring down at my socks. “She didn’t.”
There was something about the way Becca spoke that made me feel like a guest in my own memories. I always knew they talked, but I didn’t realize how deeply my mother had let her in.
It was like there was an entire version of my mother that I had never been allowed to meet. That night, I couldn’t sleep. The hallway light cast long shadows into the room that used to be mine, but I didn’t go there right away.
Instead, I padded down to the kitchen, my feet bare on the cold tile. The fridge hummed like it always did, and there on the second shelf was the peach cobbler someone had dropped off. The foil was still tucked over the top.
I peeled it back and helped myself to a cold spoonful, right there at the counter. It tasted like cinnamon and dust and someone else’s comfort. I sat down at the table and unlocked my phone.
There were no new texts. I opened Hank’s thread. Nothing since his “landed safely” message.
Then, without thinking, I scrolled to Josh’s name. He was my ex-boyfriend. The last text from him was six weeks ago.
“Hope your mom gets better. Let me know if you want to talk, Nat.”
I never replied. I wasn’t lonely for him, I was just lonely.
“I don’t want to talk,” I whispered now to the empty kitchen. “Not anymore.”
I turned off the kitchen light and wandered upstairs. I passed my old room and kept going until I stood in the doorway of hers.
I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I was hoping to feel her, smell her, or even hear the creak of the mattress under her weight. Her bed was neatly made, but I could picture how it had once looked.
My mom’s bottle of lotion would normally be near the lamp, her reading glasses folded with care, and there would be a mystery novel bent from years of use. But there was none of that now. Just the silence, thick and unyielding.
And then I noticed the shoebox beneath the bed. It was tied with a ribbon the color of sky before rain. I slid it out and lifted the lid.
There were letters. A lot of letters. All addressed to Becca.
Some were yellowed at the edges. Others were new and crisp. The dates stretched back almost four years.
I opened one. “Dear Becca,
I know I act like I’m fine, but I’m not. Thank you for sitting with me last Thursday.
Your banana bread is awful, love, but it reminded me I’m not alone.”
And then another. “Thank you for driving me to the oncologist. I didn’t want Natalie to see me like that.
She’s so sensitive, Becca. And Hank… he didn’t reply.”
And another still. “You’ve given me more kindness than I deserve.
I know I gave you a hard time in the beginning, honey. I’m so sorry. You’ve been wonderful.
I’m so proud to call you my child.”
I stopped counting after the seventh. There were no letters addressed to me and none to Hank either. Only Becca.
The next morning, I found her on the porch, sipping coffee. She sat in one of my mother’s old wicker chairs, her feet tucked beneath her, hair pulled into a loose braid that had started to come undone. A half-empty mug rested in her hands, the steam curling into the already-warm air.
The screen door creaked as I stepped out, and she didn’t turn to look at me. She just took another slow sip. “You visited her,” I said, my voice soft.
“You… helped her.”
“Of course, I did,” she said, not even pretending to misunderstand. “Twice a week. Sometimes more.”
I sat down beside her, not quite looking at her but close enough to hear the catch in her breath.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked. “She didn’t want you to know,” she said, her eyes fixed somewhere out in the yard. “She was afraid you’d feel guilty.”
“But I should feel guilty, Becca.
I left…
and I didn’t come back. Not properly.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty, Nat. You were living your life, and that’s what she wanted.
And Hank… well.”
“Hank was Hank,” I finished, and we both exhaled at the same time. Becca set her mug down on the little table between us, then folded her hands in her lap. “She didn’t want to be your burden, Nat.
But she let herself be mine. I didn’t mind it at all.”
There was no bitterness in her voice. Just a kind of softness I hadn’t known Becca possessed.
“I always thought you were cold,” I admitted, looking at Becca fully now. “I always thought you hated me,” she said. “You know what?
I think I did. A little.”
We both laughed. It was a short, fragile laughter that crumpled at the edges.
“She loved you,” I said, quieter now, almost embarrassed by the sincerity of it. “I knew she enjoyed your company, but I only realized how much now…”
Becca didn’t answer right away. She just looked out into the yard where the hydrangeas had started to wilt, their petals curling inward like they, too, were grieving.
“She tried to tell me,” Becca murmured. “In the only way she could; through her writing.”
We sat there for a while, letting the quiet fill in the spaces our words couldn’t reach. It was the first time in days the silence didn’t feel heavy.
It felt like something was shifting. Not quite healed but…
softening. Hank called later that afternoon.
“Hey, how’s it going, Nat?” he asked. “As well as it can,” I said. “It’s strange being here without Mom.”
“And I’m sure Becca’s busy being… Becca, huh?”
“What does that mean?”
“You know,” my brother laughed.
“Efficient. Robotic. Not exactly falling apart, is she?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?
Becca took care of Mom, Hank. You didn’t. Neither did I.”
There was a pause.
“I sent money. And I tried to visit when I had the time. It’s not easy having to commute all the time.
So I did what I could.”
“Mom needed your presence, Hank. Not a bank account.”
“You’re turning this into a thing, Natalie,” he snapped. “It’s not like you visited much either.”
“I didn’t pretend I did,” I said.
“I should have come back more. I know that. I’ll carry that guilt with me forever.”
“God, you sound just like her,” he said.
“Like who?”
“Like Becca! Just stop.”
Her name landed like a gift I hadn’t expected to want. “Maybe that’s not the insult you think it is,” I said before hanging up.
Later that evening, I found Becca in my mother’s kitchen, standing with her hands on the counter, staring at a tin of tea. “She saved this one,” she said. I recognized it immediately, jasmine and orange peel.
It had been my mother’s favorite, reserved for company that mattered. “She only ever made this for birthdays,” I said. “And once on Thanksgiving.”
“She made it for me once,” Becca said.
“After a doctor’s appointment. I think it was her way of saying she didn’t dislike me as much as I thought.”
“Then let’s make some now,” I said, reaching for two mugs. “In Mom’s honor.”
Becca nodded.
She didn’t speak as we steeped the tea, poured it, and sat down at the table like we belonged there. After a few sips, I opened the fridge. Casserole trays were stacked like bricks; lasagna, baked ziti, and something with too many peas.
“We can’t eat another one of these, Becs,” I muttered. “I can’t do sympathy food anymore.”
“Your mom made that squash soup with cinnamon and brown butter. That was my favorite.
I could go for a bowl of that now…”
“She always made the soup in the blue pot,” I said. “Let’s do it. Her recipe’s in the drawer.”
“You get the spices, I’ll start chopping,” she said, her smile reaching her eyes.
And just like that, we cooked. Together. In my mom’s kitchen.
Like maybe we weren’t so far apart anymore. We ate soup in silence that night, each of us stirring our spoons like the rhythm might settle something in our chests. The casserole trays had been washed and stacked in the kitchen, ready for the neighbors to collect.
The house was still full but quieter somehow. Warmer. The next morning, I found Becca in the sunroom with her coffee, boxing away my mother’s clothes from the laundry basket.
She sat on the edge of the couch, her knees close together, carefully smoothing out the sleeves of a green cardigan before folding them with reverence. Her hands trembled for a second before she sighed. “She was wearing this when she told me that the chemo wasn’t working,” Becca said, nodding at the cardigan.
“I remember that conversation,” I said. “She always said that the color washed her out but she wore it anyway. Do you know she only told me about the chemo because she said that ‘someone’ encouraged her to tell me.
Was that you? Did you tell her to video call me?”
Becca nodded. “She said that sweater made her feel like herself,” Becca replied.
“Even when her body didn’t feel like her own.”
We sat in silence for a while. We didn’t cry. But something inside both of us mellowed and softened, like cloth left out in the sun too long.
Later, we sat at the kitchen table with two mugs of lukewarm tea. I traced the rim of mine with a finger, trying to work out the shape of what I needed to say. “She kept all your letters,” I said quietly, watching steam curl above the cup.
“She asked me not to throw them out. On that final day, she told me to leave the box under her bed exactly where it was.”
“Why?” I asked, wondering if my mother wanted to guilt me in her death. “Just in case you needed to understand what we had, Nat.
I know she was your mother, but she let me in, too.”
“She was softer with you, Becca,” I said simply. “I read it in those letters.”
“She let me see her pain, Natalie. That’s not the same thing.
She was desperate for a shoulder to lean on.”
“Sure, and she didn’t trust me with that.”
“Because she wanted to protect you! Don’t mistake it for anything else. Your mother wanted to protect you, right until the end,” Becca said.
There was a tone of finality in her voice, like she didn’t want to revisit the conversation again. It was the closest I’d ever come to understanding my mother. The woman who taught me strength by way of silence.
Who never said “I love you,” but remembered how I liked my toast. “I thought I was her daughter,” I whispered. “You were,” Becca said, her voice breaking for the first time.
“And because of that, you were the one she fought hardest to keep whole.”
We didn’t speak much after that, but something between us shifted. Not forgiven, maybe, but we were both finally seen by the other. And that counted for everything.
