My sixty-nine-year-old mother had been alone for nine years when she met Mark, a charming fifty-four-year-old man,s. at her community gardening club.
In a matter of months, I saw in mom a version that I thought we had lost along with Dad. She bought a blue dress, used perfume again, and sometimes smiled looking at her phone as a teenager.
Mark also looked wonderful. He would bring him flowers, repair the railing of his porch without anyone asking and treating my sixteen-year-old daughter, Emma, kindly.
There was only one thing that none of us understood.
He never stayed after 8:00 p.m., something that seemed strange to a fifty-four-year-old man who supposedly lived alone and didn’t have to be held accountable to anyone.
Mark had dinner with us almost every Sunday, but around 7:30 he started looking at the clock. By 7:55, he already had his leather briefcase in his hand.
His explanations were constantly changing.
Once, I had to call a customer abroad at exactly eight thirty. Another Sunday, his neighbor supposedly needed help taking some medication. The following week, somehow, a technician was going to go home late at night.
Separately, the excuses seemed possible.
Together, they sounded ridiculous.
And even stranger: After seven months of dating Mom, she had never been invited to enter her house.
Emma had also twice noticed that he was driving west after dinner, when she was supposedly living twenty-five minutes east.
We started to wonder if Mark had another woman… or even another family.
Mom refused to believe it.
Then, during her birthday dinner, Mark looked at her watch just as she pulled out the apple pie she had specially prepared for him.
7:56.
I’m sorry, honey. I have to go.
Mom’s smile disappeared.
Can’t you stay ten minutes? It’s my birthday.
“I really can’t.
He kissed her on the cheek, took her briefcase and hurriedly out.
Emma watched him out the window.
