Is That Mom

Part 8 of Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

The Weight of the Past

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Part 8:

The Call with Sarah

Ethan’s hands were still trembling as he held the phone to his ear, listening to the quiet, hesitant voice on the other end. He had replayed this moment in his head a hundred times since reading the letter, imagining what he might say, how the conversation would go. But now that he was here, with Sarah’s voice drifting through the speaker, he felt at a loss for words, overwhelmed by the enormity of what this call represented.

“Thank you for calling,” Sarah said, her tone soft and cautious, as if she were trying to gauge Ethan’s state of mind. “I know this must be a lot to take in.”

Ethan cleared his throat, trying to steady himself. “Yeah, it is. I… I’m not sure what to say. I’ve spent so long wondering about her, and then I get this letter from you out of nowhere. I just… I need to understand.”

There was a pause on the other end, and Ethan could hear the faint rustle of background noise, the distant hum of traffic, or maybe a radio playing softly. “I understand,” Sarah replied, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s hard to know where to begin, but I want to help. I knew your mother, Ethan, before she disappeared. She was… she was a friend. And I think you deserve to know who she was.”

Ethan’s heart tightened at the word “friend.” It felt strange, almost surreal, to hear someone talk about his mother in the present tense, as if she were still a real person rather than a shadow, a collection of memories that never quite made sense. “What was she like?” he asked, his voice barely steady. “I mean, I don’t remember much about her. Just bits and pieces.”

“She was kind,” Sarah said, a hint of warmth creeping into her voice. “Strong, but also… fragile, in a way. Like she was always carrying something heavy, even if she never let it show. She was the kind of person who would go out of her way to help someone, even if she was struggling herself.”

Ethan listened, trying to picture the woman Sarah was describing, but it was difficult. He had spent so many years filling in the gaps of who his mother might have been, crafting a version of her that was more fantasy than reality. Hearing these fragments of her from someone who had actually known her felt like trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces that didn’t quite fit.

“What happened to her?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly. “Why did she leave? Why didn’t she come back?”

There was a long silence on the line, and Ethan could almost hear the hesitation in Sarah’s breathing, the way she seemed to be weighing her words. “It’s complicated,” she said finally. “There were things going on in her life that I don’t fully understand, even now. But I do know that she loved you, Ethan. She talked about you all the time. Whatever happened, it wasn’t because she didn’t care.”

Ethan felt a lump forming in his throat, and he swallowed hard, trying to keep his emotions in check. “Then why didn’t she take me with her?” The question slipped out before he could stop it, a raw, painful truth that he had never dared to say out loud. “If she loved me so much, why did she just… disappear?”

“I wish I had an easy answer for you,” Sarah replied, her voice barely above a whisper. “But the truth is, I don’t know everything. There were things she kept to herself, things she didn’t share even with the people closest to her. But I do know this—whatever reasons she had, she thought she was doing what was best for you.”

Ethan’s mind was spinning, a thousand questions bubbling up all at once. He wanted to scream, to demand that Sarah tell him everything, every little detail she could remember about his mother, but he forced himself to stay calm. “You said in your letter that you wanted to meet,” he said. “Why? What is it that you can’t say over the phone?”

Sarah hesitated again, and Ethan could almost feel the tension radiating through the line. “Because there are things I need to show you,” she said finally. “Things that might help you understand. But it’s not just that. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, about everything that happened. I think there are things I need to say, things I need to get off my chest. And I thought… maybe you’d want to hear them.”

Ethan’s pulse quickened. He had spent so long feeling like he was drowning, suffocating under the weight of not knowing, and now here was someone offering him a lifeline, a chance to finally make sense of it all. “When can we meet?” he asked, barely able to keep the urgency out of his voice.

“I’m free tomorrow,” Sarah said. “We can meet at the park in town, near the old gazebo. It’s quiet there, and we’ll be able to talk without… interruptions.”

Ethan’s mind raced as he thought about it. Tomorrow. That was so soon, and yet it felt like it couldn’t come fast enough. “I’ll be there,” he said, a note of determination in his voice. “Thank you, Sarah. Really.”

“I should be the one thanking you,” she replied. “For reaching out, for being willing to hear me out. I know this isn’t easy, and I want to make sure you’re ready for what you might learn. Some of it… it might be hard to hear.”

Ethan’s stomach twisted at her words, but he forced himself to push past the fear. “I can handle it,” he said, more firmly than he felt. “I just need to know the truth.”

There was a pause, and then Sarah’s voice softened. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. Take care, Ethan.”

The line went dead, and Ethan was left standing in the middle of his room, the phone still clutched in his hand. He felt like he had been holding his breath the entire time, and now that the call was over, he could finally breathe again. But the relief was short-lived, quickly replaced by a creeping sense of dread. What if he wasn’t ready for this? What if the truth was more painful than he had imagined?

He sank down onto the edge of his bed, his mind buzzing with a mix of emotions. Hope, fear, anger, confusion—they all swirled together, making it impossible to think straight. He had spent so long searching for answers, but now that they were finally within reach, he wasn’t sure if he wanted them anymore. What if finding out the truth only made things worse?

As he sat there, staring down at the phone in his hand, a small, quiet voice in the back of his mind whispered a question he had been avoiding for years. What if she’s still out there? It was a thought he had buried a long time ago, convinced that it was too painful, too unrealistic to entertain. But now, with Sarah’s words still echoing in his head, he couldn’t help but wonder. Maybe there was still a chance, however slim, that he might find her.

The possibility filled him with a strange kind of hope, a flickering light that cut through the darkness that had been suffocating him for so long. He knew it was foolish, maybe even dangerous, to cling to that hope, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to know, one way or another.

Ethan spent the rest of the day in a daze, going through the motions of his routine without really seeing or hearing anything around him. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t think about anything except the call, and what it meant for the days to come. His mind kept circling back to Sarah’s voice, to the way she had sounded so hesitant, so careful, as if she was afraid of what she might reveal.

That night, as he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, Ethan thought about all the things he might learn tomorrow, all the questions that might finally be answered. And for the first time in a long time, he felt a glimmer of hope, a sense that maybe, just maybe, he was about to find the missing pieces of his life that had been lost for so long.

But as the hours ticked by and the darkness deepened around him, that hope was tempered by fear. Because he knew that the truth, whatever it was, might not be what he wanted to hear. And once he opened that door, there would be no closing it again.

He turned over, pulling the covers tighter around himself, trying to quiet the thoughts that wouldn’t let him sleep. Tomorrow, everything would change. For better or worse, he was about to step into a world that had been hidden from him his entire life. And no matter what he found there, he knew that he couldn’t turn back now.