“I still can’t believe she got on that thing.”
Connor smiled. “She hated it.”
“For how long?”
“Ten minutes.”
“She hated it.”
I laughed.
“Where did you take her on the last Saturday?”
“To Mom’s.”
“And after that?”
Connor looked toward Diane.
“Frances asked me to take the long way home.”
My throat tightened.
“To Mom’s.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said she’d spent too much of her life rushing past things she was afraid to face.”
Diane came over and handed me an old photograph.
Mom and Diane were teenagers, arms around each other, laughing.
“Is this how you remember her?” I asked.
Diane shook her head.
“Not instead of everything.”
“Is this how you remember her?”
She touched the edge of the photograph.
“Along with everything.”
That stayed with me.
For months, I’d wondered whether the woman I’d known as Mom had been real.
She had been.
So had the jealous woman who hurt Diane.
So had the widow who missed Dad.
So had the woman who climbed onto Connor’s motorcycle because she refused to carry one old wrong into the end of her life.
I still liked to think Dad was waiting for her somewhere beyond all of this.
But now, I pictured Mom reaching him after she’d finally faced what she’d left unfinished here.
So had the widow who missed Dad.
And I understood something I hadn’t before.
She hadn’t spent those last Saturdays running from death.
She’d spent them making peace with life.
Then she took the long way home.
