Instead, I remembered a hallway from seventeen years ago—and the lesson that people who take from you count on your shock. They count on the way good girls freeze.
I wasn’t seventeen anymore.
When I was seventeen, my mother died in five months.
Ovarian cancer moved through her like a thief. One month we were at our kitchen table in Mount Pleasant, gently arguing about whether I should apply out of state.
The next month, she was too weak to lift her own coffee mug. I kept telling myself we had time, because people always talk about “fighting” cancer—like courage can bargain with a disease.
After the funeral, I stood in the living room staring at her photo on the mantle—silver frame, familiar smile—and realizing the world didn’t pause because my anchor was gone. The ceiling fan still spun.
The refrigerator still hummed. Outside, Charleston traffic still crawled over the Ravenel Bridge like nothing had happened.
My father, Gerald Beckett, was a respected attorney—one of those men whose name opened doors in the city’s polished circles. After Mom died, he worked more.
Not because he didn’t love me, but because grief made him helpless, and helplessness made him run. Courtrooms were cleaner than emotions. Cases had rules.
Loss didn’t.
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