When She Returned

by Lucinda Berry

I told him almost everything, but one thing I’d never told him was how little I remembered about Mom. It would break his heart worse than it’d already been broken, and I couldn’t do that to him, but my childhood memories were filled with his face instead of hers. My memories of Mom were more of a feeling—a time in space, etched into me in a way that no amount of time could erase. But they were just pieces. Very small ones.

How could we live our lives based on decisions we’d made when we were seventeen?

The problem with having a fairy-tale relationship story was how much other people were invested in keeping the fairy tale alive. It wasn’t just our story—it was everyone’s.

He’d been my emotional container for the fits of rage

that I had unleashed for years as I had struggled to process how I’d been robbed of so much.