Then he became serious.
“Mom, there’s something I need you to understand.”
“What?”
“When I asked you to move in after Dad died, I wasn’t thinking about childcare.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t thinking about money.”
“I know that too.”
“I was scared.”
I looked at him.
He swallowed.
“When Dad died, you sounded empty on the phone.”
I remembered those weeks only in fragments.
Condolence cards.
Casseroles.
Arthur’s coat hanging by the door.
Waking at three in the morning and reaching toward a side of the bed that would never be warm again.
Daniel continued.
“I thought if you stayed in Chicago, something in you would disappear.”
“It nearly did.”
“So when you moved here and started cooking and driving the kids around and making friends…”
He smiled slightly.
“You became Mom again.”
A sharp tenderness rose inside me.
“But somewhere along the way,” he said, “I started treating that version of you like she existed for us.”
I said nothing.
“I thought needing you was the same as loving you.”
“That is an important difference.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
He nodded.
“Now.”
I looked at my son.
The boy who used to climb into our bed during thunderstorms.
The man who held my hand at Arthur’s funeral.
The father who worked too much and worried too quietly.
He had hurt me.
And he loved me.
