The house remembers better than I do. It keeps time with the mantel clock and answers my steps with a familiar creak, as if to say: you’re still here, Louise. When Howard was alive, the kitchen smelled like cinnamon and fresh coffee every morning.
When our boy, Perion, was small, the hallway was a racetrack for tiny sneakers and toy cars. Now the rooms are gentle and too quiet. I set out one teacup, line up the pills that keep my heart honest, and tell myself the day will do what days do.
Once upon a time, I was the chief accountant for the City of Greenville. I could make a budget behave with a pencil and a stare. People waited to hear what I thought.
These days, most folks see me as a well‑meaning meddler with a garden, a neighbor who still brings cookies to the block party and insists on paying with exact change. The phone rang at 9:02 a.m. I didn’t have to look.
“Mom, hey,” my son said, radio‑cheerful. “Hello, son.” I slid a receipt into a book I wasn’t reading. “How are you?”
“We were thinking of stopping by.
Delilah baked a pie.”
Of course she did. “I always have time.”
“We’ll be there at two.”
After twenty years, I can sort my son’s needs by tone: the tight one for car trouble, the bright one for “it’s just short‑term,” the brisk one—today—for the mortgage. He’s not poor.
He assesses insurance claims after storms and makes a decent living. Delilah, pretty and younger, sells vacations for other people. They have a neat house, respectable cars, and a talent for coming up short.
I looked out the window at my rose beds. Howard and I once kept maps on the coffee table, corners softened by hope. We were going to see the world after retirement.
He died a year before I turned in my badge. I traded airports for pruning shears and learned to save like the future was a big animal that eats money. At 2:00 p.m.
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