hand and pulling me to the ornate white couch where we both sat down. “Forgiveness is a funny thing. Sometimes we don’t forgive people because they deserve it. We do so because they need it. I saw the guilt and remorse etched on Tyler’s face that day in March. It was a look unlike anything I had ever seen on my baby boy’s face, even after Melanie…” She glanced down, gently caressing my knuckles and squeezing my hand. “I don’t know when he’ll be back, but I can tell you this much. Not one day has gone by where you haven’t been on his mind. He may seem to have a tough exterior but, inside, he’s still a boy who has had his world ripped out from underneath him. His love for you is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
“How can you tell?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
“He’s my son. He’s part of me. There’s not a whole lot of gray when it comes to Tyler.”
I laughed, wiping my tears. “I noticed that.”
“When he loves, he loves with his entire heart. When he hurts, the pain is excruciating. I’m sure he’s spent every day since you left trying to figure out a way to convince you he’s worth you taking a risk on him again, despite what happened between you two.” She squeezed my hands, the gesture warm and precisely what I needed to assuage my fears. “Now,” she continued, her voice returning to its typical frivolity, “you must be starving. Do you like lasagna?”
I beamed at her, nodding.
As I sat watching her prepare dinner, I couldn’t help but be reminded of spending time in the kitchen with my own mother. Despite the posh surroundings, everything was so homey and comfortable. Time passed seamlessly as we sat at an informal farmhouse-style kitchen table and she told me stories about Tyler when he was a little boy. I told her about our crazy whirlwind romance that only lasted all of two weeks, but felt like we had known each other for years.
“Time doesn’t matter, dear,” she offered when I questioned whether he could feel as strongly about me as she insisted he did. “You can be in a relationship for years and feel nothing for the other person, or you can be together for mere weeks and feel something so strong, so beautiful, so perfect, you’d be a fool to walk away just because it hasn’t been long enough. Don’t let society dictate how long you need to be together. Love doesn’t grow. It happens, and you can’t control it. If you don’t feel it from the beginning, it’s not love.”
“When did you know with Thomas?” I asked, sipping my water. The smell of garlic and tomatoes made my stomach growl, and I couldn’t wait to devour the cheesy deliciousness she had prepared.
“Before he even said a word,” she responded, a dreamy glimmer in her eyes. “It was the summer after I graduated high school and I was enjoying my time with friends before we all went our separate ways. I was supposed to be leaving for college in a few months, and some of my friends were heading to teaching or nursing school. Others were hitchhiking their way across the country, trying to get to California. It was the sixties, after all.”
Her voice was gentle and calm, a warm smile crossing her face as if she were remembering the moment like it was yesterday.
“My girlfriends and I took the train into the city so we could go to the esplanade to listen to the Fourth of July concert and watch the fireworks. At the time, the drinking age was eighteen, so we brought a cooler and a few blankets, found a spot on the grass, and spent our day soaking up the sun. After a few hours, we ran out of beer, so I went in search of a concession stand to buy some more. There was a long line, but I waited, knowing my friends would be disappointed if I returned empty-handed. As I was heading back to them, balancing four beers in my hands, I ran into a very tall, very hard body, crushing the beers between us. It was like it happens in all those cheesy romance movies. Everything was in slow motion as I looked up from my beer-soaked tank top and shorts. I finally knew where the term love-struck came from because it felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked