Interference.
Assault.
Unlawful restraint.
Weapon drawn.
Open secure line.
I kept copies of what I was allowed to keep.
Not because I wanted revenge.
Because women in families like ours learn that memory gets negotiated when paperwork is absent.
My mother started counseling in a church community room on Tuesday nights.
She said the folding chairs were uncomfortable.
She went anyway.
The first time I visited after Michael was gone, the kitchen smelled like fresh coffee instead of burnt coffee.
The refrigerator still hummed.
The chipped blue table was still there.
But my mother had moved Michael’s chair into the garage.
In its place, she had put a plain wooden chair from the laundry room.
It did not match.
She looked embarrassed when I noticed.
“I know it looks silly,” she said.
“No,” I told her. “It looks like yours.”
She cried then, but not the way she had cried on the kitchen floor.
