Tom sat looking out at the road, then over at me every so often, like he was still confirming I was real.
“I thought if I stayed,” Tom said, “you’d never get to be anything except my mom.”
“Being your mom was never what made my life small.”
He nodded slowly. “I think I knew that sometimes. But then I’d look at everything you didn’t do.”
“You mean all the men I didn’t marry?”
He flushed. “Kind of.”
“Most of those decisions had a lot more to do with them than with you, sweetheart,” I said.
That made him laugh… tired and relieved, but real.
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