Richard came to dinner in January.
The second Sunday. At Danny and Sarah’s new house, with the lemon tree in the back.
I’d been dreading it. I’ll admit that.
In my head, I’d built him up into some kind of tyrant. A big, loud, angry man who’d look me up and down and decide I wasn’t good enough.
He turned out to be a stooped, silver-haired man of sixty-five. A retired land surveyor. With big, careful hands, a plaid flannel shirt buttoned all the way to the top, and a hearing aid in his left ear.
He was standing on the front porch when I pulled up. He’d gotten there early. He was holding a bottle of red wine in front of his chest with both hands. Like a shield.
He watched me get out of my Camry. He watched me walk up the path with my pie.
When I got to the porch, he cleared his throat.
“Mrs. Gray,” he said. “I owe you an apology.”
“Please,” I said. “Call me Margaret.”
“Margaret.” He looked down at his shoes. “My wife passed in March. Diane. Thirty-nine years. And I’ve been… I’ve been a real bear about everything since. To everybody. To Sarah, most of all.”
“I know what that’s like,” I said. “I was a bear for about two years after Walt.”
He looked up.
“I thought you’d… I assumed…” He stopped. “A woman who pays for a whole house…”
“Wants the house?” I said.
“Wants them,” he said quietly. He swallowed hard. “I thought, she’s got a son and a daughter-in-law now, and a house to hold over them. And I’ve only got my daughter left. And I’m going to lose her too.”
I shifted the pie to one arm. I reached out and took the bottle of wine from him with the other.
“Richard,” I said. “There’s room.”
He lifted his eyes to mine. They were wet.
“At the table,” I said. “There’s always been room. For everybody.”
We ate pot roast. Sarah made it, from her mother’s recipe. It was very good.
Richard told a long, funny story about a survey crew in 1987 and a goat that kept eating their stakes. Danny laughed so hard he got the hiccups.
By dessert, Richard was calling me “Maggie.”
Nobody has called me Maggie since Walt.
I let him.
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
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