The apple pie was still warm in my hands when I stepped through Michael’s front door, the glass dish fogging slightly at the edges. I’d baked it that afternoon the way I always did—Granny Smith apples with just enough cinnamon, a lattice crust that Robert used to say looked like something from a magazine even though my hands always shook when I wove the strips together. Two years after his death, I still baked as if he might walk into the kitchen and cut himself a slice before it cooled, still measured the nutmeg the way he liked it, still left the edges a little darker because he always ate those pieces first.
“Mom, you made it,” Michael said, taking the dish from me with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was something tight in his expression, something rehearsed in the way he kissed my cheek. I told myself it was stress from work, that thirty-four-year-old men with demanding jobs and four-year-old daughters were allowed to look tired on a Friday evening.
“Of course I made it,” I said, smoothing down my navy dress. “You invited me to dinner. I’m not going to show up empty-handed.”
Vanessa appeared from the kitchen in pressed slacks and a cream sweater that probably cost more than my monthly utility bill.
Everything about my daughter-in-law was polished—her highlighted hair, her manicured nails, the way she moved through rooms like she was being filmed for a lifestyle blog. She smiled at me with her perfect white teeth, but her eyes had that same tightness Michael’s did. “Brittney, you shouldn’t have,” she said, taking the pie.
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