I let my 15-year-old daughter spend the weekend with her grandmother because I thought the visit would do her good. But she came home with her hood pulled low, locked herself in her room, and cried for three days. When I finally got inside, what I saw left me speechless.
“I want to spend more time with Grandma this weekend, Mom,” Scarlett said casually, already halfway down the hall with Orry, our cat, weaving around her ankles.
We call her Letty at home.
“I want to spend more time with Grandma this weekend, Mom.”
After my divorce from Harry seven years ago, I’d worked hard to keep what mattered from turning bitter. Gloria, my former mother-in-law, and I had managed something decent. She loved Letty, at least in the ways she knew how, and I’d never wanted my daughter to lose family because adults couldn’t keep a marriage together.
So when Letty wanted to spend time with her grandma, I nodded and asked, “All weekend?”
“Friday to Sunday,” she replied, all smiles. “Grandma said we could bake and go through her old photo boxes.”
I reached out and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Text me.”
She did. A couple of short messages Friday night and one blurry photo of cookie dough on Saturday.
Nothing warned me about how my daughter would look walking back through my door Sunday evening.
She loved Letty, at least in the ways she knew how.
Letty didn’t come in the way she usually did. Normally she dropped her bag, called for me from the doorway, and started talking before her shoes were even off. She just slipped inside quietly, hood pulled low over her face. Even Orry seemed confused when Letty barely bent to touch him.
“Hey, sweetheart. How was Grandma’s?” I asked.
“Fine.”
Something in the way Letty said it made me put the dish towel down.
“That’s all I get? No burnt cookies? No sorting photos by decade?”
She kept her face turned away. “I’m tired, Mom.”
She just slipped inside quietly, hood pulled low over her face.
“Letty, look at me.”
She didn’t, and muttered, “Please don’t start, Mom,” and rushed past me.
By the time I got to the hallway, her bedroom door had already slammed, and the lock clicked into place.
I told myself it was just teenage weather. Moods, friends, and tears over things they swear are nothing. But when dinner was ready, and Letty asked me to leave her plate on the floor, that was when my worry stopped being general and turned into something sharp.
***
Monday morning, she still wouldn’t open the door. “I don’t feel good, Mom,” she called through it.
“Then let me in, sweetie,” I urged.
“No. Please… leave me alone.”
Letty asked me to leave her plate on the floor.
I stood with my forehead nearly touching the door, and then I heard quiet crying from the other side.
By Tuesday, I’d stopped pretending I wasn’t scared. Letty wouldn’t go to school. She wouldn’t answer texts from her friends. She ate only when I left food outside the door.
Once, around noon, thinking I’d walked away, she whispered through the door, “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
My heart lurched so hard that I had to brace myself against the wall.
“Like what?” I asked.
Letty was startled, and she didn’t answer.
