“You’re cooking already?” I turn to lean against the counter so I can see her face.

“I wanted to make something good.” Mama glances at me, her eyes dark and sober under the vibrant head scarf hiding her hair. “You’ll be home for dinner?”

I assess the food. Pork chops, string beans, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes.

“All this for just us?” I ask.

“Just us.” She blows out a breathy chuckle, blinks, licks her lips when they tremble. “Some days it gets bad, missing your father. I know it sounds silly, but it helps when I cook his…his favorite things.”

That feeling I usually try to hide from seizes my unsuspecting heart. Grief. Desolation that Daddy will never walk through that door. Never call me baby girl again. Tears sting my eyes.

“I miss him, too,” I whisper. “All the time. I keep wondering when it stops hurting.”

“For me, it won’t.” Mama scrubs dirt from the sweet potatoes, not looking at me. “I lost the love of my life, and it blasted a hole in the world. It doesn’t so much stop hurting as you just get used to the pain, remember how to wake up in the bed alone. Oh, you have to learn everything all over again like a baby learning to walk because I forgot how to live without that man.”

There are a million things I want to say, want to ask, but she’s never spoken this openly about her grief and I’m afraid anything I say would make her stop.

“Sometimes,” she continues, “I go into his office and pull out those stinky cigars he used to hide.”

“You knew about those?” I ask, my question, my stunted laugh, teary.

“He knew I knew.” She chuckles, snapping the ends of the string beans. “We had no secrets, Tru.”

Her probing stare turns on me. “How did it go with that Washington girl?”

The reminder of our present drama jerks me from the past.

“Good.” I turn around to help snap the ends from the beans. “She’s agreed to the conditions I laid out.”

“So she’s taking it out of the book? The lies about your daddy and Ruth?”

“Yeah. The publisher won’t release it if she doesn’t. And I have final approval.”

“You’re something else, girl.” Mama laughs and shakes her head.

My conversation with Ezra tickles my thoughts. Not the hard parts that he and I have to sort through for our future, but the mysterious parts about our parents’ pasts.

“Ezra and I went up to the lake house the other night.”

“So things must be moving right along,” Mama says, her smile teasing.

“Things were moving right along.” I grimace. “They may be grinding to a halt, but that’s another issue. When we were there, I found that star of David charm Mrs. Stern used to wear.”