Her heels clicked sharply against the uneven concrete of our walkway, a sound so familiar it tightened something in my chest. I smelled her perfume before I saw her, the same crisp scent she had worn my entire childhood. It announced her presence the way she always had, before a word was spoken.
When I opened the door, she stepped past me without a greeting.
The thrift-store couch.
The nicked coffee table.
The basket of unmatched shoes by the door.
She stopped just inside the living room and reached for the doorframe, gripping it lightly as if to steady herself.
“Oh my,” she said. “What is this?”
Not a question. A verdict.
She walked farther in, heels careful on the worn rug. Her gaze skimmed every surface, lingering on the magnet-covered refrigerator, the family calendar scribbled with school events and work shifts, the stack of library books waiting to be returned.
Nothing here matched her idea of success.
Nothing was pretending to be something it wasn’t.
I didn’t rush to explain. For once, I let the silence do the work.
She stopped in the hallway.
Her eyes fixed on the faded handprints just outside Aaron’s bedroom door. Green paint, slightly uneven. The marks of small hands pressed proudly into fresh color.
She stared at them longer than I expected.
In the corner of the living room stood the upright piano. Old. Scarred. A secondhand instrument I had tuned twice myself. One key stuck. The left pedal creaked. It was imperfect in ways my mother had never tolerated.
From the kitchen, Aaron appeared holding a juice box.
Then at the piano.
Without a word, he climbed onto the bench and began to play.
The melody was hesitant, uneven in places, but unmistakable.
Chopin.
The same piece my mother had forced me to practice endlessly as a child. The piece that had left my fingers aching and my confidence thin.
My mother turned sharply at the sound.
She didn’t move again.
“Where did he learn that?” she asked quietly.
“He wanted to,” I said. “So I taught him.”
Aaron finished the piece, slid off the bench, and disappeared into his room. He returned moments later holding a folded piece of paper in both hands.
“I made you something,” he said, walking straight up to her.
He opened the drawing carefully.
It showed our family standing on the front porch. Anna and me in the center. Aaron smiling between us. In the upstairs window, he had drawn my mother surrounded by flowers.
“I didn’t know what kind you liked,” he explained, “so I drew all of them.” Continue reading…
