Martha answered with a shaky hand.
“Hello?”
At first, she didn’t speak.
She just listened.
Then her shoulders tensed.
Then her lips parted slightly, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
I caught pieces.
A sharp voice on the other end.
Not screaming, but tight—controlled anger.
Martha’s eyes flicked to me, apologetic, like she was embarrassed to have a witness to her own pain.
She finally whispered, “I didn’t post it.”
Pause.
Then, quieter: “No, I didn’t tell anyone about… about the table.”
Pause.
Her face crumpled.
“I wasn’t trying to shame you,” she said, voice breaking. “I wasn’t trying to do anything. I just… I just went to dinner.”
I felt my hands curl into fists.
Not at her daughter.
At the world.
At the way an old woman couldn’t even have a birthday dinner without it becoming evidence in someone else’s trial.
Martha listened again.
Then she said something that made my throat close.
“I was lonely,” she admitted. “That’s all. I was lonely.”
Silence.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
She didn’t mean to cause trouble.
As if her loneliness was an inconvenience.
She hung up.
Her hands shook.
I leaned forward. “What did she say?”
Martha stared at her lap.
“She said… people at her work saw it,” she murmured. “And they asked why she didn’t come. And she said she had ‘reasons.’”
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