My aunt looked straight at me and opened her mouth.
“Your mother didn’t learn video calls because she liked technology,” she said.
“She learned because she missed her children.”
For a moment, I said nothing.
I was still holding the phone beside my mother’s bed.
The charging cable rested across my fingers.
The volume was turned all the way up.
I stared at that little speaker icon as if it had suddenly become evidence in a case against me.
“What do you mean?” I asked, though I already understood enough to be afraid of the answer.
My aunt lowered her voice so she wouldn’t wake my mother.
“She was scared she wouldn’t hear the phone when one of you called.”
I looked toward the bed.
My mother was sleeping on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek.
At sixty-six, she looked smaller than I remembered.
Not weak exactly.
Just softer around the edges, as if time had been quietly taking pieces of her while I was busy somewhere else.
“She kept it this loud?” I asked.
“Every night.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
Every night.
I remembered the times I had looked at her name flashing across my phone and let it ring because I was eating, watching something, answering messages, scrolling through social media, sitting in traffic, or simply not in the mood to explain the camera button again.
I remembered sending, “Busy.
I’ll call you later.”
Later had often become tomorrow.
Tomorrow had become the weekend.
The weekend had become nothing.
My aunt leaned against the doorway.
“She practiced before calling you.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“She practiced video calls with me.”
That hurt in a different way.
I had always assumed my mother’s mistakes came from carelessness.
I pictured her randomly pressing buttons, refusing to remember what I had already explained.
But my aunt described something else entirely.
“She would sit right there,” she said, pointing toward a chair near the window.
“She would ask me which button opened the camera.
Then she would close it and try again.
Sometimes five or six times.”
I swallowed.
“She practiced?”
“Yes.”
My aunt smiled sadly.
“She wanted to get it right before calling you.”
Suddenly I could hear my own voice from months earlier.
Mom, I’ve already explained this a thousand times.
I remembered the silence that followed.
Then her nervous smile.
I’m sorry.
I forget.
At the time, I had thought the apology was about technology.
Now I wondered if she had really been apologizing for needing me.
My aunt continued.
“She was embarrassed when she made mistakes.
She knew you were busy.”
There was no accusation in her tone.
