I pressed my hand against my mouth.
“Oh, God.”
The words barely escaped.
I had been wrong.
Not slightly wrong.
Completely wrong.
I looked toward Leo.
He was curled on the couch with his stuffed rabbit, watching me with anxious eyes.
“Mommy?”
I swallowed the pressure in my throat.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I said quietly. “We’re going back to the store.”
He tilted his head.
“To see the paint lady?”
I nodded.
“Yes. I think… I owe her an apology.”
Twenty minutes later, I found Nora in the supermarket parking lot, folding a paint-stained cloth into the trunk of a small blue car.
My legs felt borrowed as I approached her.
“I’m so sorry,” I said before she had fully turned around. “I said terrible things. I thought.”
Nora gave me a calm, gentle smile.
“Mark found me four months ago,” she said. “He brought me a shoebox of your mother’s photographs. He asked if I could put her on a wall so you’d see her every night.”
