I raised my fiancé’s ten children after he walked out on us — thirty years later, his lawyer showed up at my door and said, “He asked me to give you this envelope today.”

purposes only

“And to Mama,” Amanda added.

I shook my head, crying.

But all of them said it with her.

“To Mama!”

And for the first time in years, the chair Robert left empty no longer felt like a wound.

It felt like part of the table we’d survived around.