I thought the worst thing my son’s father ever did to me was leave me at the altar for my best friend. Then, one rainy evening a year later, his mother showed up on my porch, pale and breathless, and told me that if I didn’t go with her now, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
The first thing I saw was my bare ring finger. I was rinsing blueberries when I looked down and felt that old ache move through me all over again.
Then my son, Miles, called from the living room, “Mommy, somebody’s at the door.”
I opened it, and for one second I thought I was hallucinating.
“Mommy, somebody’s at the door.”
Patricia stood on my porch in a church dress, soaked at the hem, gripping her purse tightly. She was Luke’s mother. The same woman who had watched her son break me in front of a church full of people and then vanished like silence with lipstick on.