“Mom,” she whispered.
“How do I look?”
“You are beautiful, baby.”
I lifted my phone and took a picture. Behind her, the closet door had swung open, and Joe’s old black suit hung exactly where it had hung for three years. The orange maple leaves embroidered along the lapel glowed faintly under the bulb.
Norma had traced those leaves when she was ten, asking why they were orange instead of green.
“Because fall was his favorite,” I always said.
There was something else I had never told her.
The night Joe brought that suit home, his buddy Bob had been with him in the truck, and the two of them sat in the driveway for almost an hour before Joe came inside.
When I asked, Joe just said, “Bob worries too much.”
Norma caught my reflection in the glass, my eyes drifting toward the suit without meaning to.
“Mom? You okay?”
