Seeing my mom laugh, dress up, and fall in love again after so many lonely years should have been enough to quiet my doubts. Instead, one unanswered question kept growing louder every time Richard came to dinner.
My mom hadn’t hummed in 11 years! Not since Dad died. But there she was on Sunday afternoon, standing in front of her bedroom mirror, humming an old Sinatra tune while she clipped on the pearl earrings Dad gave her for their 30th anniversary.
I watched her from the doorway, arms folded, trying not to cry.
“Mom, you look beautiful!”
“Oh, stop,” she said, waving me off with a smile. “It’s just dinner, Avery.”
Not since Dad died.
“You’re even wearing the red dress!”
“I’m allowed to wear the red dress.”
“You bought that red dress recently, and it’s already been out of the closet more than my winter coat!”
Mom laughed, and it was such a nice sound that I almost forgot why I’d come upstairs in the first place. Which, honestly, was to snoop.
“I’m allowed to wear the red dress.”
My mom had been alone for 11 years, and now she was floating around the house like a woman in a shampoo commercial.
The reason was named Richard. He was 52, lived alone as far as we knew, and met her at the community gardening club. He complimented her tomato plants.
Within a month, he was bringing her sunflowers.
She was floating around the house.
Within two months, he’d fixed her porch railing without being asked. He remembered that Chloe, my 15-year-old, liked mint chocolate chip and always brought her a pint.
Within months, I saw a version of Mom I thought we’d lost with Dad. She bought the red dress, started wearing perfume again, and sometimes smiled at her phone like a teenager.
I wanted to like him. I really did.
He’d fixed her porch railing.
