Then he turned to his friends and said loudly, “Ugh, the cleaning crew always leaves streaks on the glass. Don’t touch anything, guys. You never know what they drag in.”
He said it while looking directly at me.
Like I wasn’t his mother.
Like I was something he needed to distance himself from.
His friends laughed. One of them made a face and muttered something about “gross.”
My hands trembled so badly I nearly dropped the cloth.
I kept wiping the same patch of glass over and over because if I stopped—even for a second—I knew I would fall apart.
I felt smaller than I had in years.
That night, I waited until we were both home and the silence had settled.
“Why would you talk about me like that?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t look up from his laptop.
“I told you not to work here,” he said. “You didn’t listen. Don’t make this my fault.”
I stared at him.
“No apology?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“You’re the one who chose to put yourself in that position.”
That was it.
No guilt.
No reflection.
Just dismissal.
I went to my room and sat on the edge of my bed for a long time.
