I could hear her crying through the phone.
“Aunt Evelyn, please tell me this isn’t real.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
“It is real, dear.”
“He is twenty five.”
“I know.”
“He wants your money.”
Evelyn looked at me then.
Not angrily.
Not blindly.
Sadly.
“That may be,” she said.
My stomach tightened.
Caroline said something else, sharp and broken, then hung up.
I pretended I had not heard.
Evelyn pretended she believed me.
Life after that became strange.
To the outside world, I was a disgrace. Neighbors stopped waving. Caroline refused to visit. Evelyn’s church friends smiled painfully and avoided looking directly at me.
But inside the house, Evelyn treated me with quiet devotion.
She cooked dinner every night even when I told her she did not have to.
She folded my laundry.
She bought the brand of coffee I liked.
She left notes on the kitchen counter when she went to garden club.
