Her thin hand found mine on top of the blanket.
“Brenda says you’ve been keeping secrets.”
“A woman my age is allowed a few,” Mom said, her eyes crinkling the way they used to before life became so heavy.
I kissed her forehead. She smelled like lavender soap and the lotion I rubbed into her hands every night.
Then I glanced at the clock.
8:12.
The bus came at 8:20.
“I love you,” I said.
“More than you know, Margaret.”
“I’ll be late tonight,” I called as I grabbed my bag. “Big meeting.”
As I passed Brenda in the kitchen, she lowered her voice.
“She really has been different lately. Quieter. Watching the door.”
“She’s tired, Brenda. We all are.”
Then I stepped outside into an ordinary morning.
Two months later, Brenda called while I was buried in invoices at work. Her voice shook so badly I barely recognized it.
“Margaret, you need to come home. Right now.”
I gripped the phone.
“Brenda, what happened? Is Mom okay?”
“Your mother fired me.” A sob broke through. “There’s a man there. I don’t know who he is, but she chose him over me. Twelve years, Margaret, and she chose him.”
“What are you talking about? Slow down.”
“Just go home. See it yourself. I can’t be there when you do.”
The call ended.
I grabbed my keys and drove home in a blur. Twelve years of Brenda. Twelve years of trust. And now there was some stranger in Mom’s room?
I pushed through the front door.
The house was silent.
Too silent.
I marched down the hall and threw open Mom’s bedroom door.
Then I froze.
Part 2
Sitting beside her bed was a huge man in a black leather vest. His beard reached his chest, and tattoos climbed up his neck and covered both of his massive hands. One of those hands held a spoon of chicken soup, carefully raised toward my mother’s mouth.
And Mom—my frail, exhausted, bedridden mother—was smiling at him like he had brought the sun into the room.
“Mom?”
