“Let bygones be bygones,” Grandma always used to say. “Carrying grudges is like carrying an open flame in your pocket. It’s gonna burn you before it burns anybody else. ”

When Darcy got home from school, her mother was taking a pie from the oven to cool. “Mom,” Darcy asked in a worried voice, “won’t you be late for work?” Usually the minute Darcy got home, Mom was racing out the door, car keys in hand.

“I’m going right now, baby. I just baked an apple pie for you girls for dessert tonight. Maybe Grandma will feel well enough for a little piece too. She used to love apple pie. She made the best apple pie in Pinellas County,” Mom said. “Honey, my friend Rhonda is picking up the first few minutes of my shift tonight, so I’ve got some extra time. Tell me about school. How’s it going?”

“Oh, everything is fine, Mom. I’m working on a science project on tidal pools, and it’ll be a lot of fun. We’re going to learn about all kinds of weird sea creatures. ”

“Sweetie, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you girls the whole truth about your father. I was just so ashamed, you know,” Mom said softly.

“It’s okay, Mom. It doesn’t change anything. He left. That’s all that’s important,” Darcy said.

“It just shamed me so much that he ran off with another woman,” Mom said. “She was a real pretty little thing. Skinny, nice legs. And she was young! That girl was twenty-four, and I was almost forty and I looked it. I was carrying ten, fifteen pounds that had no business being on this body, and—”

“Mom, stop it!” Darcy snapped. “You were pretty and you still are, right to this day. It didn’t have a thing to do with you. He was just no good. ”

“Oh, honey, don’t say that. It’s just that he was growing older too. That bothered him a lot—mid-life crisis, you know. He’d tell me all the time, ‘Mattie, I’m in my forties. You know how old that is? No man in my family ever lived to be fifty, so I’m almost dead, and all I’ve ever done is sell vacuum cleaners and live in a crappy neighborhood. ’ He just sort of went crazy thinking he hardly had any time left, and he wanted something to make him feel young again. And she was it. I guess he must’ve thought if he had a twenty-four-year-old girl on his arm, then he must be a young man again somehow. ”