He had simply stayed.
The Promise I Never Knew About
Mom continued.
“That day, I asked Noah to promise me something.”
“What?”
“I asked him to look after you.”
I stared at her.
“You did what?”
“I was desperate, Christina.”
Her voice cracked.
“Your father was gone. You barely spoke to me. I felt like I was losing you too. And Noah was one of the only people who could still make you smile.”
“What did he say?”
She gave a tiny laugh through her tears.
“He said, ‘Okay.’”
Of course he did.
But then Mom’s expression changed.
“There’s something else I need to admit.”
I waited.
“For years afterward, I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“Whenever you defended Noah, whenever you changed plans because someone excluded him, whenever you chose to spend time with him instead of doing something else, part of me worried.”
“Worried about what?”
