The package is on my doorstep when I get home, tucked against the frame like it's been waiting patiently, and I know who it's from before I pick it up because I'd recognize that handwriting anywhere—the careful cursive, the way she writes my name with both parts, Rena LeeAnn, like leaving off the middle would be improper.

There's no return address. There doesn't need to be.

I carry it upstairs, set it on the counter, and stand there looking at it for longer than makes sense. Mabel watches from the cozy chair—my mother's chair, I should say, the one she sent without a note three weeks after I moved out—with that slow blink that means she's judging me but also possibly hungry.

"I know," I tell her. "I'm being weird."

She blinks again. Unhelpful.

I open the package.

Inside, wrapped in tissue paper that smells faintly of her laundry detergent, is a scarf. Hand-knitted, soft wool, the stitches even and careful in the way that only comes from decades of practice. And it's sage green—not forest, not mint, not any of the other greens that are close but wrong—but sage, specifically, exactly, the color I would have chosen if anyone had asked.

No one asked.

No note. Just the scarf.

I stand in my kitchen holding it, and something cracks open in my chest that I don't have a name for.

Here's the thing about my mother: she doesn't know my favorite color.

She doesn't know because we don't talk about favorite colors, or favorite anything, because our conversations—when we have them—are about logistics and weather and whether I'm eating enough, delivered in short sentences with long silences between them. She doesn't know that I love sage green because I've never told her, because telling her would require the kind of conversation we don't have, the kind where you share small true things about yourself and trust the other person to hold them gently.

We don't have those conversations. We have silence, and packages, and a chair that showed up without explanation.

But this scarf is sage green.

I look at my shop wall—the accent wall I painted myself, Jennifer helping, both of us covered in sage green by the end of it. Jennifer was there. Jennifer knows what color I chose.

And Jennifer talks to everyone.

I can picture it so clearly it hurts: Jennifer at church, running into my mother at the grocery store in my parents' town, chatting the way Jennifer chats—bright and open and completely unaware that she's building a bridge across a canyon. "The shop looks beautiful, Mrs. Champion. You should see the green wall Rena painted. Sage green. It's her favorite."

And my mother, saying nothing. Filing it away. Going home and finding yarn.

I make myself tea—chamomile, not coffee, because some moments aren't coffee moments and I'm learning to tell the difference. I sit in the chair, Mabel relocating to my lap with the air of someone granting a great favor, and I pull out my notebook.

I write the letter I'll never send.

Mom,

I don't know how to talk to you. I've never known. Every conversation feels like walking through a room full of things I might knock over, and you're watching, waiting for me to break something, and I always do. I always do.

You sent me a chair without a note. A blanket. Dish towels with verses I've read a thousand times. Now a scarf in my favorite color—a color you learned from someone else because I never told you, because telling you things feels dangerous, because

I stop. Breathe. Keep writing.

Because I don't know what you'll do with the information. Whether you'll use it to love me or to prove I've changed, become someone you don't recognize, someone worldly and wrong.

I wanted you to fight for me. When I left, I wanted you to say something—anything—even if it was angry. But you went silent. You always go silent. And I don't know if that's because you don't care or because you care so much you can't find words, and Mom, I've been trying to figure that out for thirty years.

The scarf is sage green. My favorite color. You knew.

How did you know? Did you ask Jennifer? Did you drive past the shop and look through the window? Did you

I stop again. My hand is shaking. Mabel presses her head against my wrist, which is either comfort or a demand for attention, possibly both.

I'm so angry at you. I'm so angry, and I miss you, and I don't know how to be your daughter anymore. I don't know if I ever knew.

But you sent me a scarf. In my favorite color. And you made it yourself, which means you sat in your living room for hours, needles clicking, thinking about me. You made something with your hands and put it in a box and mailed it to the place I chose to be, the place you didn't want me to go.

That's something. That has to be something.

I don't forgive you. Not yet. Not all the way. But I'm trying to bear with you—that's what the verse says, bear with each other, which sounds like carrying something heavy together, which sounds like work, which sounds right.

I'm bearing with you, Mom. I hope you're bearing with me too.

Love,

Rena

I don't send the letter.

I fold it carefully, tuck it into the back of my notebook, and pick up my phone instead. My mother doesn't do long messages. Doesn't do explanations or feelings or anything that can't fit in a few words.

So I send her what she can receive.

Thank you. It's perfect.

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. My heart hammers against my ribs.

Her response comes through: Glad it fits.

That's all. Nothing about the color, nothing about how she knew, nothing about anything that matters. Just: Glad it fits.

I laugh, or cry, or something in between—hard to tell which. Mabel meows in protest at the disruption.

"Sorry," I tell her. "I'm okay. I think. Maybe."

Later, after the tea is gone and the light through the window has turned golden and soft, I wrap the scarf around my neck. It's warm. It fits perfectly, like she measured somehow, like she knows the shape of me even though she's never said so.

The accent wall catches the last of the afternoon sun—sage green, glowing.

My mother's never been inside my shop. May never come inside. But she sent me a piece of it anyway, something soft to wrap around my throat, made with her own hands in the color of the life I chose.

That's not everything. It's not even close to everything.

But it's not nothing either.

I pull the scarf tighter, breathe in the faint smell of her laundry detergent, and let that be enough for today.