I’m years late with this, too.”
We both laughed.
She set it in front of me.
Then Anna handed over the locket.
I put it around my neck.
She had been my mother when I called her “Anna.”
She’d been my mother when I thought she was gone.
She’d still been my mother through 12 birthdays I spent believing she didn’t want me.
I put it around my neck.
The truth couldn’t give us those years back.
But it gave us something else.
A chance to stop losing more.
These days, when someone asks about my mother, I say her name is Anna.
Then I usually add that she once showed up 12 years late with a birthday present.
She hates that part.
I tell it anyway.
