“I’m sorry.”
He just nodded, the way he’d nodded at me since we were seven.
****
The next Thursday, I pulled into my mother’s driveway just before five, but this time I stopped on the porch instead of letting myself in.
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
When Mom opened the door, I held up the covered dish I’d brought.
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted company,” I said.
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she smiled.
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
“I thought Margaret should have this.”
Relief washed through me.
I stepped inside.
I went back to my car and returned with a worn blue photo album.
“I thought Margaret should have this,” I said.
Mom’s eyes filled before she nodded.
Together they reached for the keys.
When Patrick’s car pulled in, I climbed into the back seat with my casserole balanced on my knees, and no one said a word about how strange or ordinary that was.
I placed the photo album on Margaret’s coffee table. She rested both hands on it.
My mom smiled.
“Open it.”
At Margaret’s, the piano stood open against the wall. My mother sat beside Margaret, and together they reached for the keys.
The house was humming again.
They played something slow and uneven, four hands feeling for the same song. Margaret laughed when she missed a note. Mom laughed back, that same real laugh, head tipped, hand at her collarbone.
I stood in the doorway with a lemon cake going warm in my hands, and I finally understood what I had been listening for on Willow Lane for three years.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Marcus: How’s Mom?
I looked at my mother beside Margaret, smiling through tears.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket. This was Mom’s story to tell.
The truth had come late. But the house was humming again.
