She turned toward me, and her smile faded slightly.
“Margaret. You’re home early.”
“Yes, I am.”
I kept my eyes on the stranger.
“Can I speak with you alone?”
The man set the spoon down, wiped a drop of soup from Mom’s chin, and stood.
“I’ll be in the garden, Miss Margaret,” he said quietly.
He walked past me. I waited until I heard the back door close.
Then I turned on my mother.
“Who is that?” I hissed. “Where did you find him? Brenda is devastated. She said you fired her.”
“His name is Louis.”
“That is not an explanation. Mom, look at him. The tattoos, the vest—he looks like he just walked out of—”
“Margaret.”
“What if he steals from you? What if he hurts you? What were you thinking, letting a stranger into this house while I was at work?”
“He is not a stranger to me.”
I stopped.
“What does that mean?”
She didn’t answer. She only turned her face toward the window, toward the garden, toward him.
“Mom, please. Brenda has cared for you for more than a decade. You can’t just replace her with some biker off the street.”
“He is staying,” Mom said.
Her voice had iron in it, a strength I had not heard in years.
“I want Louis to care for me. Do you understand, Margaret? No matter what.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
In twelve years of bathing her, feeding her, lifting her, and holding her through pain, I had never heard her speak to me like that.
Like I was the outsider.
Through the window, Louis knelt in her flower beds, pulling weeds like he had always belonged there.
