Chapter 8
I was surprised when no one answered the door at my parents’, because my father’s Lincoln was sitting, big as life, in the driveway. I jiggled the doorknob, but the front door was locked. Making a mental note to ask my mother for a key, I wandered around back, along an uneven path of slate paving stones that wobbled under my weight. The path led through a side gate into a pocket garden where brownish grasses and scraggly gray weeds flourished. I bent over to pull up a clump of crabgrass and smiled, thinking, Watch out, weeds! By spring this plot would respond to my mother’s green thumb, and bloom with color.
Although I was thinking about her, I was surprised when I turned the corner to discover my mother, bundled in her purple parka, sitting at the picnic table. Her elbows rest
