Her mother closed her eyes. “Because I was a coward,” she said. The word coward tasted like nothing. That was the strangest thing. After all these years, after all the bitterness— coward had no taste at all. Empty. Hollow. Like the space where a tooth used to be.
“You came,” her mother said. The words you came tasted like flat soda—sweet once, now just carbonated disappointment.
Her mother reached under the blanket and pulled out a photograph. A man in a navy uniform, smiling, one hand on the hood of a car. On the back, in pencil: Thomas, 1972, Norfolk . bitter in the mouth pdf
“Where are you going?” her mother asked.
Linda folded the photograph into her pocket. She stood up. Her mother closed her eyes
It still tasted like burnt toast.
“Why did you wait so long?” Linda asked. That was the strangest thing
And that, she thought, might be the beginning of something new.
But burnt toast, she realized, was still toast. And someone had made it for her, once, a long time ago, in a kitchen that smelled like rain and cigarettes and the fierce, flawed love of a woman who didn’t know how to say I’m sorry except by telling the truth when it was almost too late.
Inside: a single sheet. “I’m sick,” it said. “You don’t have to come. But I need to tell you something before I go. It’s about your father.”
Her mother was thinner than memory allowed. She sat in a recliner under a crocheted blanket, even though it was July. Her hands were bird-bones wrapped in skin.
Select at least 2 products
to compare