Then I picked up the phone and called Roxy.
“I’m going,” I said.
“I’m driving,” said Roxy.
On the morning of December thirteenth, I stood in front of my closet for a long time.
The blue blouse with the white buttons was still hanging there, where I’d put it the Saturday before that Monday call. The tags still on.
I took it out. I looked at it.
Then I put it back.
Instead, I put on my good black pants. A clean white button-down shirt. The one I’d worn to Bryce’s graduation. I put on a little lipstick, which I almost never wear. I did my hair. Roxy came over at noon and helped me with the back.
Then I went to the hall closet and took out my work boots.
My Red Wings. Steel toe. Resoled twice. I’d cleaned them the night before at the kitchen table with saddle soap and an old toothbrush, the way my father taught me. They didn’t shine. Work boots don’t shine. But they were clean.
I put them on. I laced them up.
Roxy watched me from the doorway.
“You sure?” she said.
“I’m sure.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she smiled.
“Dad would be so proud of you,” she said.
“Dad would have said I should’ve polished them better.”
Roxy laughed. “That too.”
It’s about an hour and forty-five minutes from Rockford to Madison. Up I-39, then I-90 past Janesville. Roxy drove her Honda. I sat in the passenger seat with the invitation in my lap and didn’t say much.
Maple Bluff is a little village on the northeast side of Madison, on the shore of Lake Mendota. Big old houses on big lawns. Old trees. Gas lamps on the streets. The Hartleys’ house was at the end of a long driveway. Brick, two stories, with white trim and a slate roof. Every window was lit. There were cars parked all the way down the driveway and along the street. Valets in black jackets.
Roxy pulled up to the front. A young man in a black jacket opened my door.
“Welcome, ma’am.”
I got out. My boots crunched on the salted driveway.
I stood there for a moment, looking at the house. At the lights in every window. At the shapes of people moving inside. I could hear music. A jazz trio. Laughter. Glasses clinking.
I almost got back in the car.
Then the front door opened.
A woman came out onto the porch. About sixty. Small. Silver hair cut short. A dark green dress and a pearl necklace. She stood at the top of the steps and looked at me.
“Jo?” she said.
“Judith?”
She came down the steps. Quickly. In heels, on the salted brick. She didn’t stop when she got to me. She just put her arms around me and hugged me. Right there in the driveway. In front of the valet.
“You came,” she said into my shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for asking.”
She pulled back. She looked at me. At my white shirt. My good black pants.
At my boots.
She smiled.
“Gordon’s going to love you,” she said.
The house was full of people. Warm and bright and loud. A big front hall with a curving staircase and a Christmas tree twelve feet tall, covered in white lights. The jazz trio was playing in the living room. Waiters in black vests were carrying around silver trays of little crab cakes and champagne.
Everybody was very well dressed. Suits. Cocktail dresses. Pearls. Diamonds.
Some of them looked at my boots. I saw them look. I didn’t care.
Judith took my arm and walked me through the crowd. She introduced me to everybody.
“This is Jo Hollis,” she said, every time. “Bryce’s mother.”
Every time she said it, she said it a little louder.
I didn’t see Bryce at first. Or Victor, or Whitney. The house was too crowded.
Then a big man came through the crowd toward us.
He was about sixty-four. Tall and barrel-chested, with a thick gray mustache and a red face and enormous hands. He was wearing a navy suit that looked uncomfortable on him, like he’d been stuffed into it by somebody else. His tie was loose.
And he was wearing work boots.
Brown leather Red Wings, old and scuffed, with steel toes.
He stopped in front of me. He looked down at my boots. Then at his own.
Then he looked at me and grinned.
“Jo Hollis,” he said. “Local 364.”
“Gordon Hartley,” I said. “Local 159.”
He held out his hand. I shook it. He had a grip like a vise. Calluses on his palm. A white scar across his knuckles.
“Box cutter,” he said, seeing me look at the scar. “1981. Wiring a gas station in Sun Prairie. Twenty-two stitches. Kept working.”
I held up my left thumb. The cut from the junction box on East State Street, healed now but still pink.
“Junction box,” I said. “Three weeks ago. Storefront rewire. Knob and tube.”
Gordon whistled. “Knob and tube. God bless. Nobody wants to touch that anymore.”
“Somebody has to.”
He laughed. A big booming laugh that made half the room turn and look.
“I’ve got your article on my desk,” he said. “The flood. The nursing home. Thirty-one hours.” He shook his head. “You know how many of my foremen I’d trust to do that? Maybe two.” He looked at me. “If you ever want to leave Rockford, there’s a job at Hartley Electric with your name on it. I mean it. Any day.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But Rockford’s home.”
“I figured,” he said. “Good electricians usually stay where they started.” He paused. “So did my father.”
Then his face changed. Got serious. He looked over my shoulder, across the room.
“He’s here,” Gordon said quietly. “Your boy. By the fireplace. With his father.”
I turned around.
Across the crowded living room, by a big stone fireplace with a fire roaring in it, I saw my son.
Bryce. In a dark gray suit. A white shirt. A blue tie. His hair neatly cut. Standing with a glass of champagne in his hand. Talking to a group of people I didn’t know. Smiling. Laughing.
Caroline was beside him. Pretty and dark-haired in a red dress. She wasn’t laughing.
Victor was on his other side. In the navy wool overcoat, still. He hadn’t taken it off. Whitney was next to Victor. In a pale pink dress. Her blond hair perfect.
Bryce hadn’t seen me yet.
Then Caroline turned her head. She saw me across the room.
Her face changed. She put her hand on Bryce’s arm. She said something to him.
He turned around.
He saw me.
I watched his face go through about five things in about two seconds. Confusion. Recognition. Shock. Embarrassment. And then, finally, something I couldn’t name. Something closer to fear.
He looked at my boots.
Then he looked at Gordon Hartley, standing right next to me. Gordon, with his arm around my shoulders. Gordon, in his scuffed brown Red Wings.
Bryce’s face went completely white.
Victor saw me then too. His face went red. He leaned over and said something sharp to Whitney.
Whitney didn’t answer him. She was looking at me. Not with anger. With something else. Something I’d never seen on her face before.
Shame.
Bryce put down his champagne glass on the mantel. He walked across the room toward me. Fast. Weaving through the crowd. Caroline followed him.
He stopped in front of me.
“Mom,” he said. His voice was low and tight. “What are you doing here?”
“I was invited,” I said.
“By who?”
“By me,” said Judith. She stepped up beside me. “And by Gordon. And by Caroline.” She looked at Bryce. “It’s my house, Bryce. My party. I can invite whoever I want.”
Bryce stared at her.
“I thought we talked about this,” he said. “I thought. I told you. It’s complicated. With my mom.”
“You told us a lot of things, Bryce,” Judith said quietly. “At L’Etoile. Your father told us even more.”
Bryce’s face went from white to gray.
“Excuse me,” said Gordon, very politely, to the people around us, who had all stopped talking and were watching. “Would you all mind giving us a minute?”
The crowd around us melted away. People drifted toward the dining room. Toward the bar. Toward the jazz trio. Pretending they weren’t listening.
It was just us now. Me, Roxy, Judith, Gordon. Bryce and Caroline. And, a few seconds later, Victor and Whitney, who had come over from the fireplace.
Victor’s face was red. He was furious. He didn’t look at me. He looked at Judith.
“Judith,” he said. “I don’t know what she’s told you. But you shouldn’t believe…”
“She hasn’t told me anything, Victor,” Judith said. “I called her. Two weeks ago. I asked her a question. And before I did, I called your brother.”
Victor stopped.
“Paul,” he said.
“Paul,” said Judith. “He told me everything. The affair. The divorce. Who left who. The Wednesday dinners.” She looked at Victor. “And Northwestern.”
Victor’s face went from red to white.
Bryce turned and looked at his father.
“What about Northwestern?” he said slowly.
Nobody said anything.
“Dad,” Bryce said. “What about Northwestern?”
Victor opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
So Judith said it. Gently. Clearly. The way I imagine she said things for twenty-six years in a Dane County courthouse, to families who didn’t want to hear them.
“Your mother paid for it, Bryce,” she said. “All of it. A hundred and sixty thousand dollars. She took out a loan against her house. She cashed out part of her pension. She worked every overtime shift her union would give her for four years. She worked Christmas Day. Twice.” Judith paused. “Your father put in a swimming pool.”
Bryce stared at her.
Then he turned and looked at me.
“Mom,” he said. His voice cracked. “Is that true?”
I looked at my son.
For twelve years, I’d stayed quiet. I’d let Victor tell his story. I’d let Whitney be the pretty one. I’d paid and worked and shown up and never once said, That was me. I did that.
I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want him to feel guilty. I didn’t want him to owe me anything.
But standing there in Judith Hartley’s living room in my work boots, I realized something.
Staying quiet hadn’t protected him.
It had taught him that I didn’t matter.
“Yes, Bryce,” I said quietly. “It’s true.”
He stared at me.
“You said you saved up,” he said. “When I got in. You said you’d been saving. You said not to worry about it.”
“I said that because I didn’t want you to worry,” I said. “I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me anything. I wanted you to just go and be happy.”
“Christmas,” he said slowly. “Freshman year. And sophomore year. You said you had to work. You said they were short-handed at the water plant.”
“I volunteered,” I said. “Double time. Holiday pay. Two Christmases was almost a semester.”
Bryce put his hand over his mouth.
He turned to his father.
“Dad,” he said. “You told me you paid for school. You told me it was a sacrifice. You told me that at my graduation. You said, ‘Son, I hope you know what your mother and I gave up for this.’” He stopped. “You meant Whitney. When you said your mother. You meant Whitney.”
Victor didn’t say anything.
“You told Gordon and Judith that Mom walked out on us,” Bryce said. “You told them she drinks.”
“Bryce, I didn’t say exactly…”
“I was there, Dad,” Bryce said. “I was sitting right next to you.”
“And you agreed with him,” said Caroline quietly.
Everybody turned and looked at her.
She was standing beside Bryce in her red dress with her arms folded. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying. Maybe for days.
“You agreed with him, Bryce,” she said. “At dinner. My dad asked you directly. And you said Whitney was more of a mom to you than your real mom ever was. And you said your mom wasn’t someone you’d want at a wedding. And you laughed.” Her voice shook. “And in the car, I asked you if it was true. If she really left. If she really drinks. And you said, ‘Pretty much.’”
Bryce’s face crumpled.
“Caroline,” he said. “I…”
“You let me believe your mother was a drunk who abandoned you,” Caroline said. “I’ve been engaged to you for three months. I’ve been planning our wedding. And I didn’t even know your mother’s name until my mom told me.” She wiped her eyes. “You told me you were embarrassed of your mom because she’s ‘blue collar.’ My grandfather was blue collar. My dad was an apprentice at sixteen. My whole family is electricians, Bryce. Did you think we’d be embarrassed by her?”
Bryce looked at Gordon. At Gordon’s scuffed brown Red Wings.
“I didn’t know,” he said weakly. “I didn’t think about it. I thought you were. I thought you’d be like. Like Dad’s friends. Like the people at the club.”
“You never asked,” said Gordon quietly. “Three months, son. You’ve eaten dinner at my table eleven times. You never once asked me how I started. You never asked about my boots.” He pointed at the shelf above the fireplace. I hadn’t noticed it before. Sitting on the mantel, between two silver candlesticks, was a pair of ancient work boots. Cracked brown leather. Steel toes worn through. “Those were my first pair. 1978. I bronzed them. My wife wanted to throw them out. I told her she’d have to throw me out first.”
Bryce looked at the boots on the mantel.
Then he looked down at mine.
Victor finally found his voice.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “This is a private family matter. Judith, you had no right to bring her here and humiliate us in front of…”
“Victor,” said Whitney.
Everybody turned and looked at her.
She’d been standing behind her husband the whole time. Silent. In her pale pink dress. She stepped forward now. Her face was very pale. Her hands were shaking.
“Stop,” she said. “Please. Just stop.”
Victor stared at her.
“Whitney…”
“She didn’t humiliate anybody,” Whitney said. “You did. At L’Etoile. In front of these people. In front of your son.” She swallowed. “I sat there and listened to you tell them that she drinks. That she walked out. That we paid for Northwestern. And I didn’t say anything. I just looked at my plate.” She looked at me. “I’m so sorry, Jo.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I never knew about Northwestern,” Whitney said. Her voice was shaking. “I swear I didn’t. Victor told me you’d taken out loans and Bryce would pay them back. He told me you were a mess. That you couldn’t manage money. He said you were bitter about the divorce and you’d try to turn Bryce against us.” She shook her head. “I believed him. For twelve years. I believed everything he told me about you.”
“Whitney,” Victor said. Very low. Warning.
Whitney didn’t look at him.
“When Bryce posted that picture,” she said to me. “Calling me his amazing mom. I knew it was wrong. I knew it the minute I saw it. I asked him to take it down. He wouldn’t.” She swallowed. “I should have told him why. I should have told him I’m not his mom. I never was. I’m his stepmother. And I’ve been a pretty mediocre one.”
“That’s not true, Whitney,” said Bryce quietly.
“Yes, it is,” Whitney said. “I took you to Lake Geneva. I bought you clothes. I helped you with your college essays. Those are nice things. They’re fun things.” She looked at me. “But she sewed your Scarecrow costume. She sat on the floor outside the bathroom for two hours when you got cut from soccer. She paid for your whole life and never told you.” Her chin trembled. “I can’t compete with that. I never could. I shouldn’t have let anybody pretend I could.”
Nobody said anything.
Then Bryce turned to me.
He was crying. Openly. Right there in the middle of his own engagement party, in front of the twelve-foot Christmas tree, with eighty people pretending not to watch.
“Mom,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I looked at my son.
Twenty-six years old. In his gray suit and his blue tie. With his father’s handsome face and my stubborn chin.
I thought about the Scarecrow costume. The ER at Rockford Memorial. The bathroom floor. Two Christmases at the water plant.
You’re an embarrassment, Mom.
“Bryce,” I said. “Why?”
He looked at me.
“Why was I an embarrassment?” I said. “Tell me. Really. I want to know.”
He was quiet for a long time.
“Because when I got to Northwestern,” he said slowly, “everybody’s parents were doctors. Lawyers. Bankers. They had lake houses. They went to Europe. They wore. They wore nice clothes.” He swallowed. “And you came to visit freshman year in your truck. And you parked it right in front of my dorm. And you had your work clothes on. And my roommate’s mom was there, and she looked at you like. Like you were the plumber.” He wiped his eyes. “And I was so embarrassed. And I hated that I was embarrassed. And I didn’t know what to do with it. So I just. Started pretending you didn’t exist.”
“I came straight from a job site,” I said quietly. “In Evanston. That was the Saturday I worked a double so I could pay for your spring semester.”
He made a sound like he’d been hit.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered.
“I know you didn’t,” I said. “That’s partly my fault. I never told you. I thought if I just did it, and didn’t say anything, you’d never have to feel bad.” I took a breath. “But that’s not how it works, is it? You didn’t feel bad. You just didn’t know. And not knowing let your father tell whatever story he wanted. And let you believe it.”
Bryce nodded. He couldn’t speak.
“I’m not going to tell you it’s okay,” I said. “Because it’s not. You called me an embarrassment. You let your father tell these people I was a drunk who abandoned you. You let them believe Whitney raised you. You called her your amazing mom. On Facebook. For everybody to see.” I swallowed. “That hurt more than anything has ever hurt me. Including your father leaving.”
“I know,” Bryce said. “I know, Mom.”
“But you’re my son,” I said. “And I love you. I’ve loved you every single day since I was twenty-four years old and standing sideways on a ladder in Loves Park with you kicking me in the ribs.” I paused. “I’m going to keep loving you. I don’t know how to stop. But you have to decide what kind of son you want to be. That’s not my job anymore. It’s yours.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then he did something he hadn’t done since he was a little boy.
He knelt down. Right there in the Hartleys’ living room. In his gray suit. In front of everybody.
And he put his hand on my boot.
On the scuffed steel toe of my left Red Wing. On the dried crease in the leather. On the stitching where the plaster dust had been, before I cleaned it with saddle soap at my kitchen table.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” he said, looking up at me. “I’m so sorry I was ashamed of these. I’m so sorry I didn’t know what they meant.” His voice broke completely. “They meant you were working. For me. Every single day. And I was too stupid to see it.”
I couldn’t say anything.
I just reached down and put my hand on my son’s head. The way I used to when he was small and had a fever. The way I did in the ER at Rockford Memorial when he was five and squeezing my hand while they sewed up his chin.
Gordon cleared his throat loudly. He looked away. His face was very red. Judith was crying. Roxy was crying. Caroline was crying. Even Whitney.
Victor wasn’t crying.
Victor was walking toward the front door. Alone. In the navy wool overcoat I’d worked three Saturdays to buy him.
Nobody stopped him.
Whitney looked after him for a long moment. Then she looked at me.
“I’ll get a ride home,” she said quietly. “I’m not leaving yet. I’d like to stay. If that’s all right.”
“It’s Judith’s house,” I said.
“Stay, Whitney,” said Judith. “There’s plenty of crab cakes.”
Whitney laughed. A wet, surprised laugh. Then she started crying again.
I stayed until eleven.
Gordon introduced me to every single person in his management team. Every foreman. Every project manager. He told the story of the nursing home and the flood eleven times. By the ninth time, it had become forty hours instead of thirty-one, and I’d carried two patients out on my back, which never happened. I didn’t correct him.
Caroline’s grandmother, who was eighty-nine and had flown in from Phoenix, found me by the dessert table. She took both my hands. She said her late husband had been an IBEW lineman in Milwaukee for forty-two years. She said she was very glad her granddaughter was marrying into a family with “real people” in it.
Bryce stayed by my side all night. He didn’t leave once. He introduced me to everybody he knew. His friends from the office. Caroline’s college roommates. Every time, he said the same thing.
“This is my mom. Jo. She’s a union electrician. She paid for my college.”
He said it so many times that by the end of the night, I told him he could stop.
“No,” he said. “I’m going to keep saying it. For the rest of my life. Until it doesn’t feel weird anymore.”
At eleven, Roxy said it was time to go. It was a long drive.
At the front door, Caroline stopped me.
“Mrs. Hollis,” she said.
“Jo,” I said. “Please.”
“Jo,” she said. She looked at me for a long moment. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“The wedding,” she said. “It’s next September. At my parents’ farm. Up near Baraboo. In the old barn.” She hesitated. “My dad’s been trying to figure out the lighting. He wants string lights. Hundreds of them. All through the rafters. But the barn’s old. The wiring’s terrible. Knob and tube, actually.” She smiled a little. “He’s been saying for months he doesn’t trust anybody to do it right.”
I looked at her.
“Would you?” she said. “Would you wire the barn? For the wedding?”
Behind her, Gordon was standing in the front hall with his hands in his pockets, trying very hard to look like he wasn’t listening.
“Caroline,” I said. “Your father owns an electrical company with three hundred employees.”
“I know,” Caroline said. “He said that too. And then he said, ‘But none of them are Bryce’s mom.’”
I looked past her at Gordon.
He grinned at me. He touched two fingers to his forehead. A little salute.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
Bryce and I didn’t fix everything that night. You don’t fix twelve years in one engagement party.
But we started.
He drove to Rockford the next Saturday. By himself. He parked his BMW in my driveway behind my truck. He came in and sat at my kitchen table. The same yellow table where he’d cried about Northwestern at seventeen.
We talked for six hours.
He asked about everything. About Northwestern. About the overtime. About the home equity loan. He wanted to see the paperwork. I showed him. He sat there at my kitchen table and read every page, every statement, every payment.
When he got to the end, he put his face in his hands.
“I’m going to pay it back,” he said. “All of it. The loan. The pension. Everything.”
“Bryce,” I said. “I don’t want your money.”
“I know you don’t,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to do it.” He looked up at me. “You spent four years making sure I never had to think about money. Now I’m going to spend however long it takes making sure you don’t either.”
He paid off the home equity loan in March. Forty-one thousand dollars. He did it without telling me. I found out when the bank sent me a letter saying my balance was zero.
I called him, furious.
“You had no right,” I said.
“I had every right,” he said. “I’m your son.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
He calls every Sunday now. Sometimes Wednesdays too. He comes to Rockford once a month. Sometimes Caroline comes with him. She and I go to the hardware store together. She wants to learn how to wire a light switch. She says she wants to be able to fix things in their house when they have one. She says she doesn’t want to have to call her father every time something breaks.
Victor and I don’t speak. Bryce told me he and his father had a long, hard talk in January. Bryce said it was the worst conversation of his life. He said his father cried. He said his father said he’d been jealous of me for twenty years. That I was better at everything than him and he couldn’t stand it. That telling people I’d left was easier than telling them the truth, which was that he’d been the one who couldn’t stay.
I don’t know if any of that’s true. I don’t need to know anymore.
Whitney sent me a letter in February. A real letter, in a blue envelope. It was two pages long. It said she was sorry. It said she’d left Victor in January. It said she’d moved into an apartment in Rockton and gone back to work full time as a dental hygienist. It said she was seeing a therapist for the first time in her life. It said she’d never been anybody’s real mom and she was okay with that now.
At the end, it said: Thank you for raising such a good man. I got to borrow him for a while. I know who he really belongs to.
I keep it in the drawer of my nightstand. Next to my phone.
In September, I wired the barn.
It took me three weekends. Roxy came with me and handed me tools and complained about the spiders. Bryce came the last weekend and helped me run the wire through the rafters. He’d never been on a ladder in his life. He was terrible at it. He was scared of heights. He did it anyway.
Gordon came every weekend too. He said he was “supervising.” Mostly he sat in a lawn chair at the bottom of the ladder with a thermos of coffee and told me stories about his father.
I pulled out every inch of the old knob-and-tube wiring. I ran new circuits. New outlets. New boxes. And then I strung the lights. Twelve hundred of them. Warm white. Through every rafter and every beam of that old red barn, from one end to the other, in long swooping lines like stars.
On the day of the wedding, a Saturday at the end of September, the barn was full. Two hundred people. Hay bales and wildflowers and long wooden tables. A string band. Roxy in a purple dress. Whitney, in the back, alone, in a gray one. Gordon in his navy suit and his bronzed boots, which he’d taken down off the mantel for the first time in twenty years, because he said they deserved to see this.
I wore a new dress. Dark blue. I bought it at a shop in Madison with Caroline and Judith. It was the nicest dress I’ve ever owned.
And under it, my Red Wings.
Caroline made me promise. She said if I showed up in anything else, she’d send me home.
The ceremony was outside, under an old oak tree, as the sun went down. Bryce cried when Caroline walked down the aisle on Gordon’s arm. I cried when Bryce cried. Judith cried. Everybody cried.
Then it was time for the reception.
Everybody walked from the oak tree to the barn in the dusk. The big double doors were closed. Bryce and Caroline stood in front of them, holding hands.
Gordon handed me something. A little remote. A single black switch.
“You do it,” he said. “Your wire. Your lights. Your boy.”
I looked at the switch in my hand.
Then I looked at my son.
Bryce was looking at me. Twenty-seven years old. In a black tuxedo. With a white rose in his lapel. With his new wife beside him.
He nodded.
I flipped the switch.
Twelve hundred lights came on at once inside that old red barn. All at once. Every rafter. Every beam. Warm and gold and glowing through the cracks in the old boards and the open hayloft door, spilling out across the dark field like a sky full of stars.
Two hundred people gasped.
Then the doors swung open. And everybody cheered.
Bryce didn’t go inside right away.
He turned around. He walked back to where I was standing at the edge of the crowd, in my blue dress and my boots, with the little black remote still in my hand.
“Mom,” he said. “The band’s going to play the first dance in a minute. For me and Caroline.” He swallowed. “But after that. The second song. The mother-son dance.” He looked at me. “Will you?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Not with Whitney,” he said. “I want you to know. I asked her. Last week. She said no. She said it was yours. She said it always was.”
I couldn’t say anything.
He took my hand.
The second song was “In My Life.” The Beatles. I don’t know how he knew. I used to sing it to him when he was a baby, in the rocking chair, at two in the morning, when he wouldn’t sleep and I had to be up at five for work.
We danced in the middle of the barn floor, under twelve hundred lights I’d hung with my own hands. Me in my blue dress and my steel-toed boots. My son in his black tuxedo. Two hundred people watching.
About halfway through the song, he looked down at my feet.
“Your boots are going to scuff the dance floor,” he said.
“Probably,” I said.
“Good,” he said.
And then he smiled. My son. The same smile from his graduation picture. The one where his arm was around me.
“Leave a mark, Mom,” he said. “Leave a mark on everything.”
I laughed. And then I cried. And then I laughed again.
And we kept dancing, my son and me, until the song was over, under all those lights.
