Chapter 8: The Call That Changed Everything
Ryan's phone rang at ten forty-seven.
We were home by then, sitting at the kitchen table with tea neither of us had touched.
The hospital had discharged Matt with instructions to rest, and Carol had driven him home.
The house was quiet in the way it only gets when something is still unresolved.
Ryan looked at the screen.
"It's her."
I said nothing.
He answered and put it on speaker.
"Ryan." Selena's voice was different.
Not softer exactly — compressed, like something under pressure.
"Mum."
"I watched it."
A pause.
"All of it?" Ryan asked.
"Yes."
Another pause.
Longer.
"I don't—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I don't recognise myself.
In the video.
I keep watching it and I don't — that woman doesn't look like someone I would want to know."
Ryan's hand was flat on the table.
"Then you understand why we left the restaurant," he said.
"Yes." A breath.
"Is Matthew all right?
I heard he was hurt."
"He's home.
He's fine."
"Good." Her voice caught on the word in a way I hadn't heard before.
"That's good."
I looked at Ryan.
He looked at me.
"Selena," I said.
A beat of silence.
She hadn't expected me to speak.
"I'm here," she said.
"I'm not asking you to explain yourself.
I'm not asking for a long apology.
I'm asking one question and I need you to answer it honestly."
"All right."
"Did you mean it?
What you said to Gerald after the funeral — that Matt's scholarship would have been a waste?
That some people aren't built for that kind of life?"
The silence stretched so long I thought she'd ended the call.
"Yes," she said finally.
"I meant it then."
"And now?"
Another pause.
"I watched a man stand in front of two hundred people and read a letter from his parents that he had been carrying for over twenty years.
And the only thing he used it for was to make his sister feel loved on her wedding day." Her voice was very quiet.
"No.
I don't mean it now."
Ryan closed his eyes.
"That's not enough to fix what you did," I said.
"But it's a start."
"I know."
"Matt will decide what he wants from you, if anything.
That's not my decision to make.
But Ryan is my husband, and if you want to be in our lives, things have to be different."
"I understand."
"I need you to say it like you mean it, Selena.
Not like you're managing a situation."
A long breath on the other end of the line.
"I was wrong," she said.
"I was cruel and I was wrong and I am ashamed of it.
That is not management.
That is the truth."
Ryan opened his eyes.
We sat with that for a moment — the three of us, connected by a phone on a kitchen table, in the quiet of a house that was still learning what it meant to be a home.
"I'll call you tomorrow," Ryan said.
"Goodnight, Mum."
He ended the call.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
Then I picked up my tea, finally, and found it had gone completely cold.
"Do you believe her?" I asked.
Ryan thought about it honestly, the way he always did.
"I believe she's frightened," he said.
"I believe she saw something in that video that she can't unsee.
Whether that changes her—" He shook his head.
"I don't know yet."
"That's a fair answer."
He reached across the table and covered my hand with his.
"Are you all right?"
I thought about Matt in his hospital bed, squeezing my fingers.
I thought about the letter, smoothed flat on a banquet table.
I thought about my parents, who had written one final sentence and trusted an eleven-year-old boy to carry it for twenty years.
"I think so," I said.
"Ask me again in the morning."
May you like
He did.
And the answer, by then, was yes.
