Page 103 of Eternal Devotion

James seemed at home in the kitchen, wearing an apron and wielding a spatula like he lived there or had spent many mornings cooking breakfasts with my mother.

I shook his offered hand with the utmost politeness and introduced Mordecai, who was far more authentically courteous.

Mom made tea before handing out steaming mugs. Mordecai accepted one without flinching. He did little more than warm his cold hands on it while Mom and James added the final touches to breakfast.

I watched the two dance around each other at the counter, and it was far too choreographed to be their first time sharing space. How long had James been part of my mother’s life? She had never mentioned him before. Not in texts. Not in emails. Not in the multiple conversations we shared each week.

Before long, we gathered around the dining room table to enjoy a far too extravagant meal. Scrambled eggs, hash brown casserole, bacon, sausage, and ham, fruit salad, French toast, and berry pancakes in abundance. It was enough to feed an army.

My tea was nearly gone, so when Mom and James were preoccupied, setting out the endless platters, I surreptitiously swapped mugs with Mordecai, offering a wink. He smiled and nudged my knee in silent thanks.

Everyone filled their plates, Mordecai reservedly so. His confession in the car came back to me, and I wondered how hard it was to smell such savory foods and not be able to indulge.

While we ate, Mom drilled Mordecai with dozens of questions. Where was he from? Why had he relocated to Canada? What did he do for a living? Where was his family?

All questions I feared she might ask.

I shouldn’t have worried. Mordecai came prepared and smoothly answered them all without a single hiccup. He was from London but had spent a great deal of time traveling across Eastern Europe. He’d spent many years in Romania. He worked in marketing, and it required a lot of travel. He was in Canada for a project. His family, he shared, lived overseas. His parents had died many years ago, but he had a brother, Cristofer, an uncle who had taken him under his wing, and several cousins he saw on occasion.

The entire time he talked, he mimicked eating, much like he’d done at the steakhouse, cutting small bites of food and chewing them before surreptitiously transferring the mouthful to a napkin as he wiped his mouth. Smooth and effortless.

When the inquiry about my new boyfriend died off, Mom went into flowery exposition about how she and James met, what he did for a living before he retired, about his children from a previous marriage, who were both in college, the boat he’d purchased the previous year, and the tae kwon do classes he taught Tuesday nights in the fall and winter.

They touched hands and shared lovesick smiles. Mom stole food off his plate, and he accepted forkfuls of syrup-drippy pancakes. They laughed at inside jokes and talked over top of each other in their excitement to share stories. James doted, and Mom soaked it up.

For the first time in fifteen years, the heavy weight of sorrow that lived in her eyes was absent. I should have been glad, but a small part of me ached to think she no longer needed me to hold her up.

When breakfast was over, Mom and James turned down my offer to tidy the kitchen. Instead, I collected our overnight bags from the Jeep and showed Mordecai to my old bedroom.

Opening the door, expecting it to be the same as it had always been, I stalled, confused by the sight of a modified home gym. I stood dumbfounded on the threshold, gaze roaming over the various equipment. A blue mat took up half the floor space. One wall was entirely mirrors. A dobok hung from a hook, along with training pads and colored belts.

“Oh,” Mom called from the bottom of the stairs. “You’ll need to stay in the guest room. James and I turned your old room into a workout space.”

James and I.

James and I.

Without saying a word, I closed the door and proceeded to the smaller spare room, where family members stayed when they visited. My place at home had been erased, and I felt childishly hurt as a result but too old to voice my disappointment without sounding petty. Nor was I quite sure why it mattered. Moving on was good. Moving on was healthy.

Except I’d been Mom’s pillar for years, despite our distance.

Between the looming memorial service, the unexpected displacement, and James, the visit home was turning out far worse than I predicted, and I’d never once anticipated a good time. The real punch in the gut was realizing that her pleas for me to come this weekend had more to do with introducing James than having someone available to hold her up as she remembered her long-dead husband.

“Are you all right?” Mordecai asked as I dropped my backpack on the bed.

“I will be once this is over, and I can go home.”

24

Ensley

By eleven, a steady rain fell, and I imagined every child under ten bemoaning another ruined Halloween.

I parked across the street from the church and left the Jeep running. The last time I was in the building was the day we buried my father, and I couldn’t help tumbling into the past. The windshield wipers worked overtime, clearing the view, only for it to be immediately obstructed.

A handful of people approached the church under a sea of black umbrellas, much the same as Dad’s funeral all those years ago. Mom and James stood out front, arm in arm, greeting people as they arrived, likely thanking them for coming.

James acted as her pillar. It should have been me at her side. What did he care about my dad? So far as I knew, they had never met.