Chapter Thirteen

“I remember the day I met your mother.”

Janice wasn’t listening.

“I was helping my uncle restore his lands. They’d been ravaged during the war. But we needed help, and my uncle contracted your mother’s house to do some consulting. She was still with your father then.”

Janice was pretty sure Lawrence was drunk again.

“Your mother was the one who showed up. She was never afraid to do the work. And no one was more capable anyway. I walked her around that first day, and she just kept saying ‘wow, wow.’ If only she’d seen what it looked like before I got there. She’d have seen how much I’d accomplished by then.”

Janice watched Lawrence take a sip from a bottle. She was definitely sure he was drunk.

“I remember the day I knew I was in love with her. You don’t actually fall in love. It happens slowly. It builds. It’s…. it’s a…… a tidal wave. You see it slowly coming, and then one day, it just sweeps you up.”

Janice started listening. A little bit.

“Why did you love her?”

“One day….. we were working on the saw mill. And I just found her on the ground, literally with her butt in the dirt, scraping at….. I don’t even remember. Was she scraping? Maybe she was painting.”

“So?”

“So she cared. She cared about every goddamn detail. So much that she was willing to plant her butt in the goddamn dirt and fix it. That was your mother.”

Janice was listening.

“I’ve never heard someone talk about my mom like that.”

“She was amazing.” He had a hint of tears in his eyes. “We had nicknames for each other.”

“Go to bed, Lawrence.”

“Ok.”