I was still in the kitchen, still wearing the dress I bought for her wedding. It was soft blush, simple elegant, the kind of dress a mother wears when she wants to be seen but not overshadow. I’d picked it weeks ago, tried it on more times than I care to admit, practiced smiling in the mirror, practiced what I’d say when I saw her. But that moment never came. There was no smiling reunion, no tears, no necklace clasped around her neck as I whispered, you’ll always be my baby, because she told me not to come. No big fight, no screaming match, just one short clipped phone call.
Mom, I think it’s better if you don’t come. Just like that. I stood there for hours that morning, the silence in the house pressing in like a second skin.
The kind of silence that doesn’t just feel empty, it feels pointed, like the walls are watching you wait for something that’s never gonna arrive. I made a pot of coffee I didn’t drink, wrapped the gift I’d planned to give her the necklace I’d had custom made, tucked in a velvet box. I tied the ribbon like I was still holding on to a sliver of hope.
Like maybe she’d call. Maybe she’d say she changed her mind. She didn’t.
The ceremony had already started. I kept glancing at the clock like that would change something. It didn’t.
I didn’t cry, not right away. I just sat down at the kitchen table, one hand clutching the edge like I might float off the earth if I didn’t hold on to something. The gift sat in the center of the table.
I looked at it the way someone might look at a photograph of a ghost, something once full of life that now just haunted the room. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay on the couch in the same dress, the fabric stiff and strange like it belonged to a different woman.
And the next morning? A knock. I almost didn’t answer. I thought maybe a neighbor.
A delivery. But it was him, Caleb. Still in his wedding suit, though the jacket was gone, the top buttons undone.
His face was tired. His eyes even more so. He didn’t say hi.
He just said, can we talk? Before the dress. Before the phone call. Before Caleb stood on my porch looking like he hadn’t slept in days.
There was love. Real love. Not the kind people post about with filters and hashtags, but the kind that burrows into your bones and makes a home there.
The kind that feels like breath and fire all at once. That was me and my daughter. Her name wasn’t always easy for people to pronounce, so we called her Ivy.
She was my only child. Born after five years of fertility treatments and more heartbreak than I ever let anyone see. I was alone when I gave birth.
Her father had been long gone by then. But when they placed her in my arms for the first time under the sterile hospital lights, with thunder shaking the windows, I swear the whole world quieted. She gripped my finger like she’d been waiting for me.
From that moment, it was just the two of us. Me and Ivy. Against everything.
I raised her alone. I worked two jobs teaching third grade during the day and tutoring high school kids at night. I skipped dinners, slept too little, counted pennies.
But she never knew that. Her world was safe. Soft.
Full of books, sidewalk chalk, piano lessons, and pancakes on Saturday mornings. That was the one thing I promised myself that no matter what I had to sacrifice, she would never feel the weight of it. We had our rituals.
Friday movie nights with popcorn and matching pajamas. Road trips in our old station wagon singing at the top of our lungs. On stormy nights, she’d crawl into bed beside me even at fifteen and whisper, just until it passes.
I never told her no. She was bright. Curious.
Kind. She had her father’s eyes, but not his silence. Ivy told me everything.
At least, she used to. I still remember the day she brought Caleb home for the first time. She was twenty-four, glowing like she’d swallowed the sun.
I opened the door, and there she was, holding his hand like she had something to prove. Mom, this is Caleb. He was quiet, polite.
The kind of young man who looked you in the eye and listened when you spoke. He carried her purse without flinching, laughed when she teased him. I liked him immediately, not because he impressed me, but because Ivy looked so… steady around him.
Grounded. I didn’t question a thing. When they got engaged six months later, I cried.
Not from sadness, but because it felt like a new chapter we’d write together. I pictured us planning the wedding side by side, me helping her pick out the dress, walking through venues tasting cakes. Laughing until we cried over flowers and fonts and whatever Pinterest was throwing at us that week.
I even started a little notebook, jotted down ideas, quotes, vendors. Nothing pushy, just a mom trying to help without hovering. I bought her a necklace, a delicate gold chain with a heart-shaped charm engraved with the words, Always Your Mom.
I thought I’d give it to her the morning of her wedding, pin it around her neck with shaking hands and say, You’ll always have a piece of me, no matter where you go. We looked at flower arrangements once, just her and me. She’d shown up at my house with a wedding magazine and two cups of tea.