She’d accepted his newfound interest in a relationship with his mother as a developmental fact of life, an inevitability she’d seen coming long before he had. She saw nothing nefarious in his announcing, out of nowhere, that he wanted to spend more time with her, look after her more if he could. Twice, she’d actually called it sweet. Tonight, her hair up in a thin ponytail, gold drop earrings swinging every time she laughed or nodded, she reveled in hearing Bell tell stories of Darren as a boy—how she put powdered red pepper on his hands while he slept to stop him from sucking his thumb (Teeth woulda been bucked from here to Dallas if it weren’t for me); how she tied a string from her front door to Darren’s first loose tooth to yank the little sucker clean. He didn’t know why her stories were all teeth-related. But what did it matter? His mother hadn’t raised him and didn’t have the love or trust of the men who had, his uncles William and Clayton. It was, all of it, a fiction invented between the soup and the main course. Except one story she told about standing behind the chain-link fence outside the playground of his elementary school watching her son play red light, green light and how she’d cried later when Clayton got wind of it and told the principal to bar her from the grounds. “Is that true?” Darren asked. When his mother mumbled, “Yes,” he felt a warmth spread in his throat. His tongue grew useless, and he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. By dessert, Lisa was quite tipsy. Skin damp and eyes bright and glassy, she looked at him and asked, “Darren, why am I just now getting to know your mother?”