Page 63 of Piece By Piece

But the thought stayed firmly in his brain.

It wasn’t going anywhere.

Liza sat on the balcony that evening with a glass of wine and her phone in her hand.

She finally did the thing she’d been putting off for three months.

Her mother picked up on the second ring.

“Hi, honey. How’s the festival coming along?”

“Oh, it’s good. Everything’s set for tomorrow.”

“And the bookstore? Dixie’s wrist?”

“Getting better. Listen, Mom, I need to talk to you about something.”

There was a long pause.

It was the kind of pause mothers fill with every worst-case scenario at once.

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“I didn’t leave my job because of a pivot in my career. I left because I had a major panic attack. It was a really bad one. I was at my desk during a meeting; they had to call an ambulance.”

There was silence on the other end.

Liza gripped the phone, stared at the fairy lights, and just kept going before she lost her nerve.

“I’ve been lying to you about it because I was pretty ashamed. I mean, I was supposed to have it all together. I was supposed to be the one with a plan and the big title and a five-year outlook. But instead, I just fell apart in front of twelve people and then walked out the next day. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

She heard her mother exhale.

“Oh, Liza,” she said very quietly.

“I know, I know. I just… I didn’t know how to say it.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.”

“Because you were proud of me. Because you told your friends about my job. Because I didn’t want to be that daughter who couldn’t handle her career.”

Her mother was quiet for a long moment.

“Honey, you don’t have to be impressive to be loved. You never did. Not by me and not by anyone worth loving.”

Liza’s eyes filled up.

She had known her mother would say something like that.

She’d known that she would be kind.

But hearing it and knowing it were two different things.

They talked for about another twenty minutes.

Her mother cried.

Liza cried.