Mom." I couldn't believe she was doing this again. She was taking this moment, this time when I was strongest, away from me.<br /><br />"I don't care what I have to do," she said, her voice low and even. "I don't care if I have to send you away or switch schools. I don't care if I have to follow you twenty-four hours a day, you will not see him, Halley. You will not destroy yourself this way."<br /><br />"Why are you just assuming I'm going back to him?" I asked her, just as she was drawing in breath to make another point. <br /><br />"Why don't you ask me what I said to him out there?"<br /><br />She shut her mouth, caught off guard. "What?"<br /><br />"Why don't you ever wait a second and see what I'm planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never even give me a chance."<br /><br />"Yes, I do," she said indignantly.<br /><br />"No," I said. "You don't. And then you wonder why I never tell you anyone or share anything with you. I can never trust you with anything or share anything with you. I can never trust you with anything, give you any piece of me without you grabbing it to keep for yourself."<br /><br />"That's not true," she said slowly, but it was just now hitting her, I could see it. "Halley, you don't always know what's at stake, and I do."<br /><br />"I will never learn," I said to her slowly, "until you let me."<br /><br />And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way.