I never complained where Ethan could hear me.
“Mom,” he had said once. “Vanessa wants me to call her the real mom.”
I set my coffee down very carefully. “And what did your dad say?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged, too small to shrug like that. “He just kept reading his phone.”
I bit the inside of my cheek until it stung.
I wanted to drive over there. I wanted to say the things I had been swallowing since the divorce.
Instead I smiled.
“Vanessa wants me to call her the real mom.”
“You don’t have to call anyone anything you don’t mean, sweetheart. You know who I am.”
“I know, Mom.”
At the time, I thought that would be the worst thing Vanessa ever tried to take from me.
I was wrong.
He was eighteen now, graduating top of his class, and I still bit my tongue every time Vanessa’s name came up.
