“Boys,” she said. “It’s me. Your mom.”
For a second, I was completely numb.
And in that second, God help me, some soft and stupid part of me hoped. Hoped that maybe, after all this time, she’d come to the only graduation her sons would ever have because something in her had finally woken up. That maybe she wanted to make peace. That maybe this was, somehow, a good thing.
Then I noticed two things.
The first was the folder tucked under her arm, held a little too carefully.
And the second was her eyes — the way they slid right past her own sons, barely touching them, and went instead to the driveway behind me. To the new work truck parked there. To the name painted on its door.
BOONE & SONS CONTRACTING.
And just like that, seventeen years of fooling myself fell away, and I understood exactly why Tara Wells had finally come home.
