The invitation had come on a Tuesday. “Mom, come for dinner Friday night. Just family, nothing fancy.”
My son Michael’s voice on the phone carried that careful tone he’d developed since his father died, the one that treated me like fine china that might crack at any moment.
I was sixty-three years old—neither ancient nor fragile—but grief has a way of making everyone around you walk on eggshells. “I’d love to,” I told him, and I meant it. The old farmhouse where Robert and I had raised our children felt cavernous these days, full of forty years of memories and the particular silence that follows a long marriage ending—not with divorce or rage, but with a heart attack on a Wednesday morning while he was checking the fence line in the north pasture.
Two years had passed since that morning. Two years since I’d found him lying face-down in the tall grass, his work gloves still on his hands. I arrived at Michael’s house at 6:30 p.m., carrying a pie I’d baked that afternoon.
Apple, because it had been Robert’s favorite, and because keeping my hands busy stopped them from shaking. The house was a modest colonial on a quiet street in Millbrook, Pennsylvania, the kind of place where American flags hung from porches on Memorial Day and kids rode their bikes in the street until the streetlights came on. Lawns were neatly trimmed, SUVs lined the driveways, and the HOA newsletter arrived like clockwork.
My daughter-in-law, Vanessa, answered the door. She’d always been beautiful in that carefully maintained way—highlighted hair, expensive athleisure, a smile that never quite reached her eyes. “Brittney,” she said, kissing the air near my cheek.
“You shouldn’t have. We already have dessert.”
“I wanted to,” I said simply, handing her the pie. The house smelled of roasted chicken and something else.
A scent I couldn’t quite place. A cologne, maybe, or aftershave. It tugged at something in my memory, then slipped away before I could catch it.
“Where’s Emma?” I asked, peering past her, expecting my twelve-year-old granddaughter to barrel into my legs. “Sleepover at Madison’s,” Vanessa said. “We thought it would be nice—just the adults tonight.”
Something in her tone made me pause, but Michael appeared from the kitchen before I could analyze it, wiping his hands on a dish towel.
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