It happened on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in April.
I was standing at my kitchen sink in Madison, rinsing out a coffee mug, with the phone tucked between my ear and my shoulder, when my daughter said, “Mom, don’t come this summer.”
I actually turned off the faucet.
The kitchen went quiet. I could hear the refrigerator humming. I could hear a lawnmower somewhere down the block, the first one of the year.
“What do you mean, don’t come?”
Lauren sighed, the way she’d been sighing at me since she was thirteen. The sigh that said I was making something simple unnecessarily difficult.
“Derek wants the lake house just for us this year. We need some privacy.”
The lake house.
My lake house.
I stood there holding a wet coffee mug, and I didn’t say anything for long enough that Lauren said, “Mom? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“I’m not being like anything, honey. I’m just trying to understand.”
“It’s not complicated.” Another sigh. “Derek says it makes him uncomfortable when you just show up.”
Just show up.
At the house I owned.
“I don’t just show up,” I said carefully. “I come up for the Fourth. And a week in August. I always call first.”
“You came up in May last year without calling.”
“To meet the dock repair man, Lauren. Because the dock was falling into the lake.”
“I know, Mom. I’m just telling you how he feels.” Her voice softened a little. “It’s been a hard year for us. You know that. Derek’s job stuff. We just want one summer that feels like ours. Is that so terrible?”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
TAP ” READ MORE ” 👇
