They married in a small ceremony I helped pay for. They continued to live in my house in Roland’s old study, which they repainted without asking me, a color called harvest fog that looked to me like the inside of a mistake. I am not a bitter woman. I want to be clear about that. I made room for Cynthia because she was Dererick’s wife.
And I made room for Derek because he was my son and because the house was large enough and because I was at my core someone who believed that family was worth the inconvenience. But there were things I noticed. The way you notice a small crack in a wall and tell yourself it has always been there. I noticed that Cynthia had taken to referring to the living room as our living room with an emphasis on the hour that subtly excluded me.
I noticed that Derek had stopped asking whether I needed anything at the grocery store and had started coming home with bags full of things neither he nor Cynthia would share. I noticed that they whispered in the kitchen in a way that stopped when I entered. small things, the kind of things a reasonable person tells herself she is imagining.