After dinner, I went out to the yard and looked at the stars. It had been years since I had seen them so clearly. Maybe because it had been years since I had taken the time to look up.
They would be back tomorrow. Furious, desperate, probably with a new plan to convince me I had lost my mind. But for the first time in a long time, I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted.
They arrived at dusk on the third day. Like a storm you see coming from afar.
David’s car kicked up a cloud of dust on the road that took several minutes to settle. I was watering the plants in the garden, but I left the hose running and sat in the rocking chair on the porch to wait for them.
They got out of the car like actors in a poorly rehearsed play. David first with that scolded child face he used to make when his father caught him in some mischief. Amber next in her wrinkled green dress and her hair disheveled from the trip and finally Catherine adjusting her sunglasses even though the sun was already setting.
None of them looked at me directly at first. They just stood there as if waiting for me to speak first, as if I owed them an explanation.
The silence stretched so long that even the crickets fell quiet.
“Well,” I finally said without getting up from the rocking chair.
“David was the first to walk towards the porch.” His steps sounded heavy on the wooden planks his father had laid 15 years ago.
“Mom, we need to talk. Talk.” He sat on the step. The position he used as a child when he wanted me to forgive him for something, but he was 40, 2 years old now, and childhood tricks no longer worked on me.
“I don’t understand what happened. Why did you do what you did?”
“You really don’t understand, David.”
