I stepped toward her, careful, like she might bolt.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
Her jaw tightened.
“I kept looking,” she said quietly.
I nodded, tears instantly rising. “I know.”
“Everyone else’s moms were there,” she added.
“I know.”
“And Coach asked where you were,” she said, and her voice wobbled now. “And I said you had to work.”
Dan shifted behind me but didn’t step in. He let this be mine.
Mia swallowed.
“But,” she said, and her eyes flicked down to the note still on the table, “I didn’t want to lie.”
I reached for her hand. She let me take it.
“So I told Dad to tell me the truth,” she continued. “And he did.”
My throat tightened. “He told you about Walter.”
Mia nodded once.
Then she surprised me.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t yell.
She didn’t ask why my job always got the best parts of me and she got the leftovers.
She just said, “Was he scared?”
That one question cracked me open.
“Yes,” I whispered. “He was.”
Mia blinked fast.
“Did you… did you really hold his hand the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Even when you wanted to leave?”
I swallowed. “Especially then.”
Mia stared at the floor for a long second, like she was talking herself into something.
And then she whispered, “I think… I think I would’ve been scared too.”
I crouched down so we were eye level.
“You mean if you were him?”
She nodded.
And then—softly, like it was a confession—she said, “Mom… when I looked up and you weren’t there, my stomach hurt.”
My throat burned.
“I know,” I choked.
“But when Dad told me why,” she continued, “my stomach hurt in a different way.”
I shook my head, crying now.
“I don’t know how to do both,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to be your mom and be… that for someone else.”
Mia’s eyes filled.
Then she said the thing I will remember for the rest of my life:
“Maybe being my mom means you do both.”
I pressed my forehead to hers.
I wanted to crawl inside that sentence and live there forever.
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