I was frosting a grocery-store sheet cake that said “CONGRATS, LEO!” in blue icing when my son walked into the kitchen looking like he’d seen a ghost.
That made me put the piping bag down.
Leo was eighteen, tall, and usually easy in his own skin. But that day, he stood in the doorway, pale and tight-jawed, his phone clutched so hard I thought he might crack it.
“Hey, baby,” I said. “You look terrible. Tell me you didn’t eat Grandpa’s leftover potato salad.”
“CONGRATS, LEO!”
He didn’t crack a smile
“Leo?”
He dragged a hand through his hair. “Mom, can you sit down? Please?”
Nobody says that casually when you’ve raised them alone.
I wiped my hands on a dish towel and tried for humor anyway. “If you got someone pregnant… I need ten seconds to become the kind of mother who handles that well. I’m too young to be a Glam-ma.”
That got me the faintest breath of a laugh.
“Not that, Mom.”
“Okay. Great. Not great, but better.”
I sat at the kitchen table. Leo stayed standing for a second, then finally sat across from me.
“Mom, can you sit down? Please?
A few days earlier, I’d watched him graduate in a navy cap and gown while I cried hard enough to embarrass him.
At my own graduation, I’d crossed the football field with a diploma in one hand and baby Leo on my hip. My mother, Lucy, had cried. My father, Ted, had looked like he wanted to hunt somebody.
So yes, Leo’s graduation had done something to me.
He’d grown into a wonderful young man, smart, kind, and funny when I needed it most. He was the kind of son who noticed when I was tired and quietly did the dishes before I could ask.
Lately, though, he’d been asking more about Andrew.
I’d always told him the truth as I understood it. I got pregnant at seventeen, when Andrew and I were wrapped up in first love. When I told him, he smiled and nodded, promising we’d figure it out together.
The next day, he disappeared. He never came back to school. When I ran to his house that afternoon, there was a “FOR SALE” sign in the yard, and the
