I looked out the kitchen window at the lemon trees José and I had planted thirty-two years earlier. The fruit had come in heavy that season. Yellow, bright, and stubborn.
“Carlos,” I said, “did something happen to the family chat?”
There was a pause.
Not confusion.
Not concern.
A pause of someone deciding how much truth to spend.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. I removed you from that one.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“You removed me?”
“It was just for working adults, Mom. Planning things. You don’t really understand what we talk about in there.”
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