Chapter 10 - EMILY PROBLEMS
I did not sleep that night.
At 2:13 a.m., I gave up pretending.
I made coffee and sat at my kitchen table with the graduation photograph in front of me.
Emily Problems.
The phrase sounded almost childish.
That made it worse.
It suggested a category.
A collection.
A habit.
How long had my mother been compiling evidence against a version of me she invented?
A week?
A year?
Ten years?
At 3:04, Ryan called.
I watched the phone ring until the last second.
Then I answered.
“Hi.”
His voice was quiet.
“Megan told you.”
“Yes.”
“About the folder?”
“Yes.”
“And the standards thing?”
“Yes.”
He exhaled.
“I didn’t know.”
“That she would file?”
“Yes.”
“But you searched for the organization.”
“She asked me what journalists do when they have conflicts.”
“And you did not wonder why?”
“I did.”
“What did she say?”
“That she wanted to understand your job better.”
At three in the morning, that almost made me laugh.
“Ryan.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I screwed up.”
“Yes.”
He was silent.
I waited.
“I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes.
It was the first uncomplicated apology I could remember hearing from him.
No but.
No if.
No explanation disguised as absolution.
“I believe you didn’t know she would file,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“That doesn’t mean you were uninvolved.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He exhaled.
“I’m starting to.”
I looked at the photograph.
“What is in the folder?”
“I don’t know.”
“You saw it.”
“I saw the label.”
“Where?”
“Dad’s office.”
“Why was Mom in Dad’s office?”
“She uses the printer in there.”
“What was she printing?”
“Your award article.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“I asked.”
“What did she say?”
“That she needed context.”
“For what?”
“She didn’t answer.”
I stood and paced into the living room.
“What else did you see?”
“A couple screenshots.”
“Of what?”
“Your Twitter account.”
“It’s not called Twitter anymore.”
“Whatever.”
Despite everything, I smiled faintly.
“Were they recent?”
“I think so.”
“What posts?”
“One about the journalism award.”
“Anything else?”
“One where you criticized some sheriff’s office statement.”
I remembered the post.
It linked to a public correction.
Nothing personal.
Nothing improper.
But clipped out of context, almost anything could be made to look aggressive.
“Ryan, did Mom ever ask you for information about my work before this?”
He was quiet.
My skin prickled.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“That means more than once.”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Over the years.”
I stopped pacing.
“What did she ask?”
“Mostly what you were doing.”
“That sounds normal.”
“Sometimes whether you had said anything about the family online.”
I stared at the dark window.
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you check?”
“Sometimes.”
Cold moved through me.
“You monitored my social media for her?”
“That sounds worse than it was.”
“That sentence has never improved anything.”
He sighed.
“She would ask if you had posted after holidays.”
“Why?”
“She worried you would write about arguments.”
“I have never written publicly about our family.”
“I know.”
“But she had you checking.”
“Yes.”
I sat down.
The shape of our relationship changed again.
Every time I thought I had reached the foundation, another floor opened beneath it.
“Did you ever tell her about my friends?”
“What?”
“Who I spent time with.”
“Sometimes.”
“Relationships?”
Ryan hesitated.
My chest tightened.
“Ryan.”
“She asked about Noah.”
I closed my eyes.
Noah had been my partner for almost three years in my late twenties.
We ended things peacefully when he moved to Seattle and I refused to leave Chicago.
Mom had always treated the breakup like proof that my career ruined my personal life.
“What did you tell her?”
“That you two were serious.”
“Anything else?”
“That he wanted you to move.”
“How did you know that?”
“You told me.”
I remembered.
One Thanksgiving night, Ryan and I had sat on the back porch drinking cheap bourbon from coffee mugs.
I had trusted him.
The memory hurt differently now.
“And you told Mom.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She asked.”
“That is not a reason.”
“It was in our house, Emily.”
“What does that mean?”
He became frustrated.
“It means everything got back to her.”
I went still.
He heard it too.
The sentence exposed more than he intended.
“Everything?”
“Not literally.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ryan.”
“I was a kid for part of it.”
“So was I.”
He fell silent.
I regretted the sharpness again.
But there was no clean way through this.
“Did she ask you to report on me?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“She would ask questions.”
“And you answered.”
“Yes.”
“Because?”
“Because she was Mom.”
There it was.
Authority without examination.
The family version of a source no one fact-checked.
I leaned back.
“Do you know why she favored you?”
Ryan laughed bitterly.
“I’m not sure favored is the word I’d use this week.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Because I stayed close.”
“Dad thinks so.”
“Dad said that?”
“Yes.”
He was quiet.
“I stayed close because she made leaving sound like betrayal.”
The sentence surprised me.
“What do you mean?”
“I got into Purdue.”
I frowned.
“You never told me that.”
“Exactly.”
My chest tightened.
“You got into Purdue?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you wanted to stay local.”
“That’s what Mom told everyone.”
“Did you?”
“I wanted to go.”
I stared at the phone as if I could see him through it.
“What happened?”
“She cried for three days.”
I closed my eyes.
“She said Dad’s blood pressure was bad and she needed help.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“She said the dealership job was a better opportunity anyway.”
“Was it?”
“It became a good job.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
His voice was flat.
“It wasn’t the better opportunity then.”
For the first time, I saw how Mom’s favoritism had worked from the other side.
She did not just praise Ryan.
She kept him close enough to praise.
She inflated his life while narrowing his choices.
With me, she used dismissal.
With him, dependence.
Different tools.
Same goal.
“Why did you never tell me?”
Ryan laughed without humor.
“Why did you never tell me she canceled your Northwestern trip?”
“I thought it was about money.”
“Right.”
We sat in silence across two states.
Then Ryan said, “I think she hates anything she can’t narrate.”
I looked at the graduation photo.
“That is the most accurate thing you have ever said about her.”
He sighed.
“What do we do?”
The question was new.
Not what are you going to do.
What do we do.
“I handle my professional complaint.”
“And me?”
“You decide what kind of relationship you want with her.”
“Megan?”
“You tell her the truth.”
“What if the truth makes her leave?”
I closed my eyes.
“Then the lie would have made her stay.”
He did not speak for a long time.
Finally, he whispered, “That’s worse.”
“Yes.”
At 4:01 a.m., we hung up.
At 8:30, I arrived at the newsroom.
Priya was waiting with a printout.
“The council forwarded the full complaint.”
My stomach tightened.
“Can I see the name?”
She nodded.
She handed me the page.
I looked at the signature line.
For several seconds, I could not make sense of what I was seeing.
The complainant was not my mother.
It was not Trevor Sloan.
It was my brother.
Ryan Carter.
After Ryan and I hung up, I opened an old photo folder on my laptop.
I searched his name.
Hundreds of images appeared.
Ryan at twelve with braces.
Ryan at sixteen beside his first car.
Ryan at twenty-one pretending not to be drunk at a cousin’s wedding.
Ryan asleep on my couch during a Chicago visit I had almost forgotten.
That trip was five years earlier.
He had come for a dealership training conference and stayed one extra night with me.
We ate deep-dish pizza, argued about baseball, and walked along the lake until midnight.
Mom had called him six times.
I remembered teasing him about it.
“Mom thinks Chicago kidnaps people.”
Ryan had laughed.
“She just worries.”
At the time, I saw only favoritism.
She called him because she cared where he was.
She did not call me because I was expendable.
Now another interpretation surfaced.
She called him because she needed to know where he was.
Control could look a lot like concern when you were the one receiving it.
I found a photograph from that night.
Ryan and me on the riverwalk, cheeks red from the cold, both laughing at something outside the frame.
I sent it to him without explanation.
A minute later he replied.
That was a good night.
I wrote back.
It was.
Then he sent another message.
We were not always like this.
I stared at the words.
No.
We were not.
Before sleeping, I opened the family chat again and searched the word proud.
There were hundreds of results.
Mom was proud of Ryan's sales numbers.
Proud of Dad's retirement.
Proud of a cousin's new baby.
Proud of the church choir.
My name appeared beside the word only twice.
Once when I graduated high school.
Once when I helped Ryan move apartments.
I almost let the search become another verdict.
Then I stopped.
Love could not be audited by keyword count.
That was exactly the kind of false precision I rejected in my reporting.
Still, the pattern hurt.
May you like
Both things could be true.
