I called her yesterday. I told her I wanted to hear about my sister. My mother was quiet on the other end of the line for a long time. And then, in a voice that was smaller than I have ever heard her use, she said, "Oh honey. I thought you would never ask." We talked for three hours. She told me things she had not said out loud in three decades. She told me Mary Beth's middle name. She told me what her hands looked like. She told me that she had kept a lock of her hair in a drawer I had walked past ten thousand times as a child and never opened. And when we hung up, my mother said, "I love you. I have always loved you. I am so sorry if I was not always good at showing it." I said I loved her too. I said I was sorry I had said what I said in the kitchen. She said, very quietly, "I'm sorry I said what I said back." And I am still trying to figure out, a week later, whether what we said to each other was the worst thing we had ever done — or the most honest. Tell me honestly — was she wrong to say it back to me, or did I finally get the truth I needed to hear?

* Story inspired by real-life situations. Names and details have been changed for privacy.