Mom picks up on the second ring.

"Amélie? Sweets? Is it really you?" Her voice trembles, and I swear I hear a sob.

"Hi. Is it a good time?" The French words cling to my tongue, and I have to force them out.

"Yes, oh, yes. I'm so glad to hear your voice. I'm rea—" She sobs for real. My mother, who's the most buttoned-up and unemotional person I know, is crying.

"Mom, hey, Mom...stop."

"I—I'm just so happy you've ca-a-aled."

I struggle to understand her through her hiccups.

"I called because"—I need a mom. I don't know what to do. I'm afraid to trust people. I'm lonely—"I might be moving to France." 

I use the potential unconfirmed move as my excuse, my protection from showing her the whole truth in case she wounds me again. On purpose or not, I have no place in my soul left for new damage. Every cell of me is in pain, and not the kind from stepping on a nail, or burning yourself. My suffering is devious and ancient. I've built it up and stored my feelings over several years of people abandoning me. I hurt because the heavy load is too much for one person to carry, but who would I share it with?

"What? That's great. Why? When?" Her words sound nasal, and a slower sob follows.

"I applied to several Ph.D. programs." I rattle the facts to cover up the cracks in my voice. "One's in Bretagne-Loir. If I get in—I begin in January."

"So close. That"—she blows her nose—"the best thing I've heard in years." She sounds almost cheery.

She didn't care for any of my news in years, but I get it. This call is definitely better than my 'I hate you' text. The joy in her voice is confusing but also not. She made it clear over the last month that she wants to have a relationship with me, and it's much easier to accomplish if I'm in France.

"Are you there, sweets? Are you listening?"

"I am."

"I—I love you." My stomach clenches. Words, those are nothing more than words. They don't mean much, but I absorb them, wanting more, on repeat, to make up for years of not hearing them from her. "I love you so, so much. That's the main thing I want you to always know. No matter what happens."

What happens? She doesn't expect us to be besties and bare our souls to each other, talking through the night.

"And the other thing is that I'm sorry. I apologize." She says is with firm belied of a person who thought about it. Came to terms with being at fault.

For what? What are her reasons? She must have some. I want to hear what story she'd concocted in her head that was a good enough explanation for not talking to her daughter for years.

"I've made a lot of mistakes. I was young, and it's not an excuse. But it's true, and I was selfish, and your dad...he gave me all the support he could. He tried to keep us together. I—not as much."

That part is not news. Dad presented me with plenty of reasons why Mom's choice was a valid one, how she needed to finish her degree, how she wanted to be with me, but it wasn't possible.

"I was glad to have my life back when you went to live with him. I thought you were little, and you won't remember anything anyway. And then, after we got divorced, I didn't think I could take care of you the same way your dad and Nonna did. Now I know I've abandoned you. But then, even when you were not there, in my head I was still your mother. I loved our summers together."

In her head. What about in my head? In my heart? When I was with her, she was the best mother. But she pretended my life in Chicago didn't exist. She never talked about it. She assumed that France was only for the summer, and Chicago was for my real life. She never questioned the status quo. And it hurt then, it hurts thinking about it now. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from blurting my truth. The self-doubt. The surety it was my fault, something had to be wrong with me for my mother to pretend I didn't exist so much of the year.

"And that ... that last summer, it was such a whirl: the wedding prep, you as a flower girl, moving in with Manu—I thought I did okay—"

"You did okay? How about me? Why have you never asked me to come live with you? You had a house, a husband, a job. You were not a young helpless girl who had to let go of her kid." I didn't cry when I got home and I'm not going to cry now. I swallow the lump in my throat and do my best to sound normal. "You were over thirty. What was your excuse then?"

"You were fourteen, you had your friends at high-school. Moving you to a different country, to a school in a different language when you were doing so well made no sense. You were happy. I had no idea you even wanted to move in with me. You never said a word."

"You never asked. Ever." My head hurts less, the meds must've finally kicked in, but the heaviness remains. Every word I say to her takes a scab of a myriad of old wounds. "I remember zero times in my life when you asked me to move in with you. We had our summers, yes, but at the end of every single one I was waiting for you to ask me to stay for longer. To stay for forever."

"But you loved your father," she tells me as if I could forget.

"But I loved you too." My voice cracks. I'm losing control, and that's not a state I like to be in. But I don't have a choice anymore. This is my chance to share my hurt, my load, and see once and for all if she can be my mother again, or if my fear was right, and I am alone in this world. "I wanted you to want me. I knew Dad wanted me, but you... I thought for the longest time you wanted me, too. When Manu and you got married, I was sure you will ask me. That was the pivotal moment, but you did not. And that's when I knew you did not want me."

"You must realize that's not true." I hear indignation in her voice. Indignation at me or at herself. It better be the latter. I'm going to hang up if she starts blaming me for the situation we find ourselves in. "I wanted you so much. I would've changed everything to keep you with me, but you seemed so happy. Our summers were magnificent but at the end of each you got restless, and I understood that you were ready to go to Chicago, to your true home."

"I was only restless because I wanted you to tell me that time I was staying."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you and ... hear outright that you do not want me? At least that way I had a hope. It was your job to offer, not mine to ask. But when the boys were born one after the other, you did ask. You asked me to skip a summer. To not even come then." I remember my shock when instead of a summer of meeting my two baby brothers, my mother kicked me to the curb and asked me to not visit anymore.

"You were eighteen, an adult. And I was covered in newborn poop, spit up, and delirious with sleepless nights. I didn't want you to come and be utterly bored while I dealt with the babies. I didn't want you to resent me for spoiling your last summer before college with diapers and bottles when you could go explore and be young. I didn't get to do that when I was your age, and a trip around the US sounded so much more fun than spending two months listening to a ten and one month old cry every minute of night and day. You needed your freedom, not me, not any—"

"No, no, no." Such bullshit. Such excuses. I throw my heaviness at her, no longer caution, no longer afraid of her reaction. "Eighteen may legally be an adult, but I was still your child." I'm shouting. The force of air rushing out my mouth chokes me. "Am still your child." My throat stings. "I needed you. I needed my mom." My hoarse whisper brings out what I didn't want to admit to when I was a child. What I wanted her to offer to me.

"I know. I'm sorry. I...I was so absorbed in my life, it all seemed...I thought...now I understand I thought wrong, but I thought you were better off without visiting me. You were so self-sufficient, and I was sure you'd be visiting us the year after, but then you check-in less, and every time I called you were busy, and life just happened, and I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it all to fall apart." She sniffles. "Please, please, forgive me."

Life happened... Life happened? A shriek doesn't leave my mouth. I did dodge some of her calls after I got back from my summer trip, because I was pissed off. At her. At the babies she actually wanted. Part of me wanted to punlish her, just a little bit. But I was not the only one who let our communication slide from calls once a week, to once a month to a handful of emails a year, to Christmas and birthday cards only. She knew I existed. I knew she existed. But we didn't exist together. How do we get back to each other? How do I forgive her?

"Will you forgive me?" She repeats on the other side of the Atlanic ocean in a house I've never been to.

"I already did." These words roll off my tongue. I hear them, and they are true. I want her in my life. I want my mom. And after hearing her side of the story, I'm certain she wants me. Forgiveness might not be that bad after all.