Mrs. Fletcher(96)

“You want to come in for a drink?”

George wrinkled his brow like she’d asked him to solve a tricky riddle.

“I’d like to. But I think maybe we should take it slow.”

He kissed her a second time, an apologetic peck on the cheek, and then headed back to his car. Eve went inside, feeling like she’d somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and poured herself a glass of consolation wine. She’d only taken one sip when her phone chimed, a text that made her close her eyes and thank a God she didn’t believe in.

Is it too late to change my mind?

*

Things moved quickly after that. Why shouldn’t they spend their weekends together? And why wouldn’t he drop by for dinner on a Tuesday night, and maybe stick around and watch some TV? And if he got a little sleepy on the couch, which he tended to do, who said he had to go home? Her bed was a queen, and she discovered that she slept a lot better with him lying next to her, snoring very softly, as if he were making an unconscious effort not to disturb her.

Everything was better when George was around. Even Brendan liked him, which was the biggest surprise of all, given how grumpy and territorial her son could be. They bantered easily, employing a half-affectionate, half-mocking style that Brendan had previously reserved for his favorite teammates and closest buddies.

“Oh shit,” he’d say, returning home from CrossFit. “This guy again? Don’t you have a TV at home?”

“I have a nice one,” George would say. “Lot nicer than this piece of crap. But your mom has Netflix and she’s really pretty.”

“Whatever, dude. I just hope you left me some food this time.”

“I finished off the steak, but I left you lots of that zucchini you like.”

Eve was deeply frustrated with Brendan in those days—he was the problem she couldn’t solve—but George insisted her son was just going through a rough patch, that tricky transition between high school and the real world.

“He’ll be fine, Eve. Not everyone’s a Rhodes Scholar.”

“I’m not asking him to be a Rhodes Scholar. I’m just asking him to do his homework every once in a while.”

They’d probably had a dozen versions of this conversation before the night George laid his hand on her stomach and said, “You know, he can always come work for me. Just for the summer. If he doesn’t like it, no big deal. He can try something else.”

Eve was silent for a while, trying on the idea of her son holding a big wrench, wearing dirty Carhartt pants. It wasn’t a life she’d ever imagined for him, but it seemed oddly plausible, certainly easier to picture than Brendan as a financial analyst or CPA. And she knew George would be a good boss and a patient teacher.

“You should talk to him,” she said.

A week later, Brendan withdrew from ECC and started working full-time as a plumber’s apprentice. He took to it right away. He enjoyed the physicality of the work, the tools and the terminology, the sense of accomplishment he felt at the end of the day. It could definitely be gross, but he said you got used to that pretty quick. The starting pay wasn’t bad—way better than minimum wage—and it would get a lot better in a few years, after he passed his exams and got his journeyman’s license. A six-figure salary by the time he was thirty was definitely not out of the question. It was even possible that he could someday take over the business, be the Son in Rafferty & Son.

Eve told him not to get ahead of himself, to just take things one step at a time. She was disappointed by his decision to give up on his education, but she was relieved to see him so upbeat and purposeful, with some of his old confidence restored. It was a huge improvement on the sullen, beaten-down version of her son she’d gotten used to living with over the past winter and much of the spring.

*

I was hungover pretty bad on the day of my mom’s wedding, but at least I had a good excuse. After the rehearsal dinner, I went to George’s house and stayed up really late, drinking vodka shots with his daughter Katie and her boyfriend, Gareth, this tall, skinny dude who seemed about ninety-five percent gay.

“We’re gonna be stepsiblings,” Katie said. “Might as well get to know each other.”

It was weird that I’d never met her until the night before the wedding, considering how much time I’d spent with her father, way more time than I spent with my own. George and I were like family already. But she’d been living in Ithaca for the summer, tutoring underserved youth, and it was too long a drive to just pop home for the weekend.

“I don’t know.” She glanced around the living room, which was full of family pictures that included her dead mother, and gave a little shudder. “It’s just really hard to be here. I feel like crying every time I walk through the door.”

“It’s a grief museum,” muttered Gareth. He had a goth thing going on, hair that was really short on one side and really long on the other. The long side just kinda flopped over his face, covering one eye.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

“Thanks.” Katie tried to smile. She showed me the inside of her forearm, her mother’s name tattooed in graceful cursive letters. “She was a great person. You would’ve liked her. Though I guess if she was alive, you two would never have met.”

“Probably not,” I said.