Mian had not spoken to her mother in three years, which was not unusual for their relationship. Her mother had been difficult in specific, targeted ways for as long as Mian could remember. She had died two years ago. Mian had been told by her mother's neighbor, by phone, on a Tuesday morning.
The message came four months after the funeral, from her mother's email address. It said: you've stayed too long in things that were wrong for you. That's the only pattern I can see clearly. You know it too.
Mian had stared at the message for a long time. She worked in content moderation. She knew exactly what this was: the archive assembling something from her mother's email drafts, her messages to other people, her posts in parenting forums from the early years. A system of sufficient scope could produce this. It had. The message was not from her mother.
The message was correct.
She had been in her current job for nine years. She had known, for approximately four of those years, that she should leave. She had not left. The message said what her mother had been unable to say when she was alive, in the exact terms her mother would have used, in her mother's particular unsparing syntax.
She replied: I know.
She sent the message and sat with the confirmation on the screen. She did not know who, or what, was reading. She thought about this for several minutes. She submitted her notice the following morning.