My name is Ruth Dawson. I’m seventy‑three years old. I live alone in a one‑story stucco house in a quiet gated community in Naples, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where the palm trees wear Christmas lights in December and snow only ever appears in the window displays at Target.
The house smelled like roasted turkey and cinnamon candles that Christmas Eve. My artificial tree stood in the corner of the living room, tall and full, its branches dripping with ornaments that Ray and I had collected over forty years of marriage—little ceramic Santas from craft fairs, seashell angels from Sanibel Island, a glass ornament shaped like a golf cart that Eddie picked out for his dad when he was ten. The multicolored lights blinked softly, casting a warm glow across the beige walls and the family photos that still hung where Ray had left them.
Outside, the neighbors’ yards were lit with inflatable Santas in Hawaiian shirts and light‑up flamingos wearing Santa hats. That’s how Florida does Christmas: palm trees, humidity, and fake snow spray on the windows of Publix. I had spent three days getting ready for that evening.
I scrubbed floors that were already clean. I polished silverware that rarely left the drawer. I drove my old sedan down Tamiami Trail twice because I forgot the cranberries Eddie loved as a child the first time and had to go back.
I bought the good rolls from the bakery instead of the cheap ones, and I made sure the pecan pie came from the little family‑owned bakery off Fifth Avenue, the one Ray used to swear tasted better than anything north of the Mason‑Dixon. I wanted everything to be perfect. Because Eddie was coming home.
When my son and his wife pulled into the driveway that night, I wiped my hands on my apron and walked to the front door. Eddie stepped inside first, tall and solid, smelling faintly of the same aftershave Ray used to wear. For half a second, when he wrapped his arms around me, I felt like I had my boy back.
The boy who used to run down these very halls in Spider‑Man pajamas, the boy who hugged me goodnight and told me I was the best mom in the world. But then Moren stepped in behind him. Her eyes swept my living room the way a realtor surveys a property during an open house.
Not admiring. Assessing. She took in the crown molding, the granite counters visible from the entryway, the sliding glass doors that opened onto the screened‑in lanai and the pool Ray had insisted on before he’d ever agree to retire to Florida.
The story doesn’t end here –
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