Chapter 5
“You seem very happy these days.”
I looked at my mother across the table. Her brown and gray hair was pulled back into a loose bun, and she was dressed in a loose-fitting, blue linen shirt and matching pants. We were having brunch together Sunday morning at a restaurant she liked that wasn’t far from her house in Willowbrook. At age sixty-seven, Julia Nealon looked great. She’d retired from her job as a nurse three years ago and spent her days now gardening and traveling the world with her retired older sister Beth. The two had gone to Panama earlier in the year.
“I am happy,” I told her.
Her blue eyes peered at me from behind her wire-rimmed glasses, and she raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Did Clayton come back?”
My mother loved Clay and insisted on calling him by his ful
