Closed it.
She had no answer.
We sat there in silence.
Then Mom finally spoke.
“I do like it.”
I turned toward her.
“I like cooking for everyone. I like the bedrooms being full. I like hearing people moving around in the morning.”
She looked toward the lake.
“When your father died, this house became so quiet.”
Her voice softened.
“For two summers, I couldn’t even come here.”
She looked back at us.
“Now it isn’t quiet anymore. And I love that.”
Susan’s shoulders relaxed.
Too soon.
Mom continued.
“But I suppose I got carried away.”
“With what?”
Mom gave a small, embarrassed laugh.
“Trying to make everybody want to come back.”
At first, I didn’t understand.
Then everything clicked.
“You got married,” Mom said. “Suddenly you had this whole new family. Daniel’s parents. His relatives. People I didn’t know.”
She swallowed.
“I wanted everything to be easy for you.”
She looked at me.
“I wanted them to like coming here.”
A pause.
“I wanted them to like me.”
Suddenly, the entire summer rearranged itself.
The new sheets.
The new towels.
The little hotel basket.
The special mayonnaise.
The peach cobbler.
Every meal.
Every coffee cup.
Every unnecessary trip to the store.
Mom hadn’t simply been serving them because she was incapable of saying no.
She had been auditioning.
Trying to earn a place inside my new family.
“The sheets,” I said.
Mom smiled tiredly.
“The sheets.”
“The expensive mayonnaise.”
“Susan likes it.”
“The peach cobbler every Saturday because Richard once said he liked peach cobbler.”
Richard looked up.
“You make that every week because of me?”
“You said you liked it.”
Richard looked horrified.
“I was just being polite.”
Mom stared at him.
Then started laughing.
For some reason, we all almost did.
But when her laughter faded, she said quietly,
“Every time your cars pulled into the driveway, I thought I had done something right.”
Susan went pale.
“Maggie, I thought you genuinely enjoyed all this.”
“I do enjoy taking care of people.”
Mom looked straight at her.
Then she said the sentence I still remember.
“I like taking care of people, Susan. I don’t like being taken for granted. Those are not the same thing.”
Nobody had anything to say after that.
Susan stared toward the corner of the deck.
