“No.”
“Then what? Because I swear to God, Patrick.”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw.
“I can’t. I gave her my word.”
“Are you sleeping with my mother?”
I stood up, my voice shaking.
“Patrick, you’ve known me since we were seven years old. She is a widow. She is grieving. And you show up every Thursday in a clean shirt and take her away where none of us can see, and now you won’t tell me why?”
“Rachel, don’t.”
“Are you sleeping with my mother?”
His face crumpled like I’d slapped him.
He drove away.
“God. No. Rachel, it’s not that. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I can’t.”
He put the car in drive.
“Patrick, if you leave right now, I don’t know how I come back from thinking what I’m thinking.”
They all felt like pieces of the same puzzle.
“I’m sorry.”
And he drove away.
I stood in the street until the taillights disappeared, my whole body shaking.
That night I replayed every word Patrick had said. The flour on Mom’s counters, the covered dishes, the whispered conversations — they all felt like pieces of the same puzzle.
Patrick knew something about my mother.
Once, as I came through the kitchen door, I heard Patrick say, ‘She isn’t ready for the family to know.’ My mother saw me, and they both went silent.
****
By the next Thursday, I had told myself a dozen times that Daniel was right and I should leave it alone. But Dad had trusted me to look after her, and now Patrick knew something about my mother that I did not.
At five thirty, I parked two houses down, angled for a clear view of her front walk, and waited.
At six, Patrick’s car pulled in. My mother stepped out onto the porch in a soft blue dress I’d never seen her wear. She was carrying the same small tin, wrapped in a cloth, that I’d watched her fuss over all week.
I couldn’t breathe.
I followed them across town, three cars back, my hands slick on the wheel.
Instead, they stopped outside a small blue house. An elderly woman opened the door, and my mother walked straight into her arms.
I sat in my car and watched them hold each other on the porch of a stranger’s house, and I couldn’t breathe.
Then I got out.
She had my mother’s eyes.
I walked up the path with my keys still clenched in my fist. Patrick saw me first. His face went white.
“Rachel.”
The old woman looked up.
I froze. I had never seen that face before, but I knew it instantly. She had my mother’s eyes.
“I think it’s time you knew.”
My mother turned, her face draining of color.
“Sweetheart.”
“Mom.” My voice barely made it out. “Who is this?”
The elderly woman steadied herself on her cane and did not look away from me.
“Rachel. Come inside. Please. I think it’s time you knew.”
