Her fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket.
“When I was eight, she left me with my aunt and promised she would return in a week. She didn’t come back for almost three years. When she did, she said she had been working. Then she disappeared again.”
Maya looked at Liam.
“I decided I would never become the kind of mother who could leave.”
David sat beside her.
“That’s why you were so afraid at the hospital,” he said. “When the social worker came in.”
Maya nodded.
“Your mother knew that.”
The words sharpened the room.
“She knew?” David asked.
“I told her once. Before Liam was born. I thought she was trying to understand me.”
Maya gave a small, bitter laugh.
“She said motherhood heals old wounds. Later, when she wanted me to stop questioning her, she said women with abandonment issues sometimes imagine danger where there isn’t any.”
