About ten minutes later, the door opened.
My mother came out first.
Her eyes were slightly red, but her expression was calm.
My father followed, looking satisfied.
"Let's go," my mother said to me. "Home."
My father patted her back. "I've got a dinner tonight. Don't wait up."
My mother nodded. "Don't drink too much."
On the way downstairs, she held my hand the entire time.
Her palm was cold.
When we got home, she went straight to the kitchen.
She started cooking.
I stood in the doorway, watching her.
"Mom."
"Hmm?"
"What about Grandpa and Grandma?"
She kept chopping vegetables. She didn't answer.
At dinner, she kept piling food onto my plate.
"Eat more," she said. "You've gotten thin."
The next afternoon, a lawyer came to the house.
My mother talked with him for a long time.
After he left, she sat on the couch, staring at nothing.
"When your father and I first started out," she said suddenly, "he couldn't even afford to buy me flowers."
I sat down beside her.
"It was your grandfather who helped him." She gave a small smile. "Now he's rich."
She didn't finish the thought.
But from that day on, something in my mother shifted.
She started putting herself together—new clothes, careful makeup.