“You’ve already given us something we could never afford to buy,” I told her.
“You brought my father back into
our home.”
Maya stared at the money.
Then she quietly nodded.
We spent the afternoon together.
Mom made chicken soup with potatoes, carrots, and far too much pepper, exactly the way Dad used to like it.
We ate around Maya’s folding table.
She only had two bowls, so we used mugs for the soup.
And Maya told us everything she remembered about my father.
She told us how he’d joked that the diner coffee tasted like something brewed inside an old tire.
How he’d said meeting June at a dance hall was the luckiest event of his life.
How he’d claimed he stepped on her foot four times when they first danced.
“Five,” Mom corrected, laughing. “It was definitely five.”
Maya smiled.
“He told me his daughter loved animals. That she’d once brought a wild possum into the bathroom.”
I nearly dropped my spoon.
“I forgot about that!”
Mom covered
her face.
“I certainly didn’t.”
“He said June screamed so loudly the neighbors could hear.”
“I did not scream,” Mom protested. “I expressed concern.”
“You stood on the toilet, Mom!”
All three of us burst into laughter.
Real laughter.
The kind that makes your shoulders shake.
And somewhere in the middle of it, I heard myself make a strange little hiccup sound.
Maya stopped laughing.
She looked at me with such tenderness.
“There it is,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Your laugh. Just like he said.”
By the time we prepared to leave, it was getting dark.
Mom gave Maya our phone number and insisted she call whenever she needed anything.
Before stepping outside, Mom looked at Dad’s watch.
Then she looked at Maya.
“Would you like to keep it?” she asked. “You’ve looked after it longer than I ever did.”
Maya shook her head.
“No. It belongs with you.”
“Are you
certain?”
Maya smiled.
“I don’t need it the way I used to.”
“Why not?”
“Because now I have something better.”
She looked from me to my mother.
“I have people who care about me.”
The drive home was quiet.
Mom kept one hand resting over the watch.
As we approached the turnoff for Route 9, she asked me to pull over.
I stopped beside the road.
She lowered her window and listened to the ticking.
