the end, and she glances down at her hands while I let the shock of this revelation fully soak in. And then I reach for her hand, squeezing it gently. My eyes dart to his urn in the living room. My heart sinks to the floor. Because I bet she’s right. He would be devastated that I used him as an excuse to push someone so wonderful away from me.
I steady my voice. “Mom, don’t cry. Please. It’s more . . . complicated than that.”
Even behind glistening eyes, her stare doesn’t lose its punch. “Is it? You love him, and he loves you. It doesn’t get simpler than that.” For a moment she stops, lips pursed, shaking her head. “You think if you don’t let people get close—no friends, no relationships—you don’t have to face losing them someday,” she says. “That’s no way to live.”
Another truth bomb that takes a silent minute for me to process.
“You should call him,” she finally says.
“I can’t. You watched the video of our argument. You heard the things he said to me and the things I said to him. They were awful. I don’t know if we can come back from that.”
“People in love hurt each other, unfortunately. But you learn to forgive. Your dad and I learned that long ago.”
“Mom, you and Dad bickered over what takeout place to order from or where to vacation. Not this sort of thing.”
“You think we never argued about anything serious?”
“Not in front of me. You were pretty much the perfect couple.”
An amused chuckle falls from her lips. “We weren’t even close to perfect.”
“You sure made it seem that way. Everyone agreed. All my friends thought you were the cutest married couple they ever met because you always seemed so in love.”
“Oh, we were in love.” She takes a long sip of water from my glass. “But you’re wrong to think we never had any real problems.”
Tapping her fingers on the tabletop, she gazes into the kitchen. “Your dad broke up with me right before we got engaged.”
My mouth falls open. “I never knew that.”
“I laugh thinking about it now. It was so ridiculous. So typical. We were young, barely twenty-one. Looking back, it made complete sense, and I don’t blame him at all. But at the time, I was so hurt.” She wags her finger at me. “In fact, if you had come to me at twenty-one and told me you were getting married, I would have told you not to, to take a break, anything to get you to wait longer. Getting married too young is the kiss of death for so many couples.” She folds her hands on the table and her gaze turns serious. “I wanted to get engaged, but your dad got cold feet. Said he wasn’t ready, that he wanted to see other people. So we broke up. And he did exactly that.”
I hold my breath, unsure if I want to picture my dad in his younger years sowing his wild oats.
I shake my head, refusing the visual. “Wow. What a jerk. That sounds so unlike him.”
“Exactly what I thought at the time.” She twists around in the direction of Dad’s urn. “You had a bit of a jerk streak when you were younger, Harold. Thank goodness you were handsome enough to make me forgive you.” She turns back to me. “I cried myself to sleep for weeks, I was so heartbroken. But then a month later he showed up at my doorstep unannounced. I was shocked. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t been eating or sleeping. He said he made the biggest mistake of his life by letting me go. He wanted me back right then and there.”
“Are you serious?” I grip the edge of the table with both hands, eager to hear more.
“Dead serious. But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy.”
My fingers dig into the engineered wood. It’s like I’m listening to a page-turner on audiobook. “What did you do?”
Chuckling, she shrugs. “I told him no way I wanted him back. And then I went on a bunch of dates with a few other young men.”
“But . . . you said you were heartbroken over Dad. You said you wanted him back.”
“I did, but I wanted him to know I had options too.” She waves a hand in the air. “I wanted him to see that I wasn’t that easy to win back—that he would have to work for it. He got the message