Nothing. What waited for me at home was nothing. That was the thing I’d been avoiding for years, the thing that Bella recognized as soon as she’d grown old enough to see me for who I really was. I was a woman without hobbies or friends, who talked to strangers on the phone all day—not to help them with their problems, but so I could hear the sound of another human being’s voice. For a while there, I got to be Bella’s mom, and that was enough to hold up the pretense of more. As long as I was busy and active in her life, I could ignore the fact that I wasn’t busy or active in my own.
