My mother called at 2:07 a.m. and said, “You can c…

I had spent years becoming someone solid. And somehow one phone call from my mother could still make me feel like I was twelve and standing in the wrong place in a family photo. “What exactly are you worried I’ll do?” I asked.

She went quiet for just a beat too long. “Just… don’t dominate the conversation.”

There it was. I could picture her saying it, mouth pinched, hand smoothing the front of one of those floral blouses she wore to church, funerals, and any occasion involving judgment.

Don’t dominate. As if existing in full view was some kind of rude act. I remembered a shelf in our living room growing up.

Long dark wood, polished every Saturday. Five framed pictures of Daniel: baseball uniform, birthday cake, church Christmas pageant, school award, beach trip. One of me, half hidden behind a ceramic vase full of fake hydrangeas.

If you wanted to see my face, you had to move flowers out of the way. At eight years old, I thought it was probably an accident. At fourteen, I knew it wasn’t.