Croquette. A game I now think I absolutely and most assuredly despise. I stood in Milli Hammel's well-manicured lawn. A nice day, yes, though the air had chilled quite a bit as of late. Milli, her perfect pearls and perfect husband and perfect home with perfect pets, made me want to put the mallet square in her over-perfect face.

I'm not even sure what those feelings were for, never before had I been so overcome with such a horrendous thought. I didn't even stay the whole hour I had agreed upon.

The anger was like a new sensation, waking parts of me I hadn't felt in a while. It wasn't fair, you see? Everyone else still had their husbands and mine wasn't the only one gutter-drunk that night but mine was the one that did not come home.

And they all seemed perfectly fine with that.

"I don't understand, Mother." Calvin tossed his hands in the air, exasperated.

I didn't either so I couldn't hold it against him. The kitchen cabinet door bounced and shuddered when I slammed it shut.

"What's going on in your head?"

I shrugged off the question, watching with narrowed eyes as the cabinet door, still shuddering, slowly swung open. I shoved it shut again. No amount of slamming, however, made it stay shut . . . but the open maw of the cabinet, like a lewd gaping orifice, was nearly ominous. It made me want to rip the doors off. As Calvin talked about another doctor's appointment, I pulled all of the cabinet doors open wide to even out the light but there was one I couldn't reach.

Moving him aside, I took hold of a kitchenette chair.

He gripped the back of it to stop me. I yanked hard. The feet kicked out, screeching against the tile. The chair tipped and clattered to the floor.

I remember in that moment having a flashback, so vivid and impossible to ignore, of my wedding night. Kent in a suit, smiling beautifully as he opened a box and found a picture of the dining set inside, a gift from my father long since passed.

"Oh God!" I collapsed to the floor, taking up the chair and cradling it to me, rocking it madly, trying to fix the past with pain, somehow.

Calvin stooped and pulled the chair free from my arms. He slipped his hands underneath me, lifted me up, and carried me to my room.

The bed, blessedly, was gone and in its place was the daybed. He placed me in the middle, taking the throw from the back and draping it over me. I clutched the corner, sniffling into the plush cotton threads.

He sat by me for a while, stroking hair from my face, until the emotions began to fade.

"Get some sleep, Mother." He stood, kissing my forehead.

I reached for his arm. "Don't. I don't want to be alone anymore. I can't be al—" Tears choked off the words.

He hovered over me, his hand on the edge of the glitzed frame, the other trapped in my grip. His eyes wandered the room . . . for what, I don't know.

"Just lay down with me,” I pleaded. “Just a few minutes."

Seeming reluctant, he nodded. Sitting at the foot of the daybed, he slipped his shoes off and tucked them underneath. Then he did the same for me, slipping my heels from my feet.

I felt as if his body against mine was a security blanket in a way—heat everywhere, love and comfort. With his arm around me, his breath on my neck, I closed my eyes.

I never considered there to be lines you have to actively decide not to cross as a parent. Cause-effect. Action-reaction. Bad behavior gets punished. Good behavior gets rewarded. If you do things the right way, voila, a grown adult who’s fully functional and self-sufficient emerges.

A line that is most absolute and firmly chiseled in stones which are then lined up along the sandy beach of morality is that you don't wake up and touch your grown, step-adult in inappropriate places.

But when I woke with his heat right next to me I recall quite clearly seeing Kent. The jut of his jaw, the dark of his eyebrows, the slight dip in his bicep just underneath the cup of the shoulder.

And it was Kent I wrapped my arms around, Kent I kissed so wildly he woke from his eternal slumber with a start.

His hands on my shoulders thrilled me as he pressed against me. I pulled and yanked until I was on top of him, straddling those hips like so many times before, kissing and kissing and kissing until my lips stung and my neck was sore.

A flash of memory, of reality, jolted me. I let go with a gasp and stared, horrified, in the eyes of Calvin.

There aren't words filled with enough shock and astonishment and embarrassment to describe how mortified I was in that open-eyed moment. Might as well have taken his turgid member into my mouth or slipped my fingers in his backside, it was no different than a madly passionate kiss.

Crying out apologies, I tried to explain that I thought he was Kent. I could have sworn he was Kent. Same shaped shoulders, same expressive near-red eyes!

"It's okay!" He clutched my cheeks with warm hands, eyes wide but there was no judgment there. "I understand, Mother. This has been very hard on you, father's death. Doctor Innan explained that you're living in a state of denial and might do . . . irrational things. But understandable things. Now don't beat yourself up, please. Okay?"

I nodded, seeing him only through a film of tears and embarrassment.

"I'm going to make breakfast." He pushed up from the bed and took extra care to climb over me, not brushing against me in any way. "You shower." He patted my lower leg that protruded from the homespun throw. "I think you can manage on your own this time."

Showering?

I sat up as he closed the door, wiping away tears. Of all the things to forget about! I couldn't recall the last time I did in fact shower. Angrily, I shoved up from the bed. How can one person lose so much time!

The thick closet door rumbled as I shoved it aside. I rummaged through my dresses, pulling out my favorite one.

Why the sadness! Kent brought this on himself, drinking far too much and attempting to walk home along a dark street like a fool. And here I was, you see? Falling apart, living like a tragic urchin in Oliver Twist. Oh, my misery.

The shower, dear Lord, how could one forget such a soothing thing? The water fell like warm rain, small fingers of comfort, taking with it tears and emptiness. I took time, then, in front of my boudoir and lighted mirror to dress myself as I usually did.

Makeup. It was the staple of my life. Every day I sat here applying it carefully. That last morning with Kent was the last time I had done so, if I do recall.

The dress: a dark blue number with opal and shell along the neckline. No more work clothes and house-wear complete with slippers.

The house filled with the smell of sweet rolls baking with cinnamon and sugar, coffee, and the fatty snap of bacon. My feet felt light as I breezed down the hallway, walking quickly so as to feel the air on my skin again.

"Morning, Vin." My heels clicked resolutely on the tile.

He looked away from the pan of frying bacon and grinned wide. "Wow, Mother. You cleaned up well."

"I've decided that perhaps it's time I stopped living in squalor." I took two mugs from the cabinet. "Back to old routines. Maybe some new ones." As I poured a cup I looked over the calendar, trying to discern which day it was. The month said September—was it really that late in the year?

"It's the twentieth."

"Right. Of course it is." I glanced at a number of events that were penned in: a brunch, a social, and Kent's birthday on the fourth of November. Take a deep breath, I refused to let myself be swallowed up with more of that hollow, aching sadness.

Calvin slid two pills to my side of the table.

"How is school?"

"Going well. Semesters off to a heavy start."

I pulled out a seat. "Anything exciting?"

"No. Five courses," he explained as he took up a hot pad and opened the oven door. "And then that's that. Three years and done."

Heat made the air shimmer as Calvin pulled the pan of sweet rolls out and set it on the stovetop.

The conversation was what should have taken place long ago, and perhaps it had but I can't recall. It wasn't until we sat together to eat that the morning's molestation even came back to me, and it was like shutters being drawn and locked over a window.

Oh, he did well not to mention a thing. Calvin was a strong and solid boy his whole life, in aptitude and emotionally. He was never vindictive or foul in any way, to me or even his father before I came into his life, and so of course he said nothing to me of it. What is there to say? "Doctor, my insane Mother attacked me sexually and now I have permanent psychological and emotional scars."

"Your father was wonderful and loved you very much," I said as I reached out for his hand, but I couldn't bring myself to quite touch him, it suddenly seemed very wrong for me to do any slight thing such as that. I yanked my hand back and looked away.

He reached out for my hand, though, and took it sweetly, lifting it to his cheek. "He was wonderful, I know."

I returned to work soon after. Smithen Niles offered me my old position as a stenographer at the firm, but I turned down the offer. Calvin had found a job for me at a convenience store. On my feet all day was difficult at first, but soon I adjusted, enjoying the simplicity of it. It took little effort, little thought, to work as a cashier. Money was simple, and this business was clear on the opposite side of town, away from the cluster of friends I had come to spite.

Soon we fell into a new routine.

"Morning, love," I'd say when I'd come home. He would smile and greet me with a kiss to the cheek.

I'd comment on the smell of food in the air something such as, "Is that cardamom?" He'd reply with, "Yes, and maple," or something equally fitting. And we would sit and eat, smiling, sipping wine, sharing events of the day: the strange lady with straggly hair earlier in the day that I felt nothing but sadness for; the girl that sat next to him in class who keeps borrowing pens only to not return them.

"Where does she put them?" he said, laughing heavily. "I haven't figured that out yet. They just keep disappearing into the pit of her purse."

After dinner we'd curl up together on the couch. He'd lean against the arm, a textbook draped across the chenille, a pad of paper in his lap. I'd rest my head on his shoulder and watch late-night television. The era of color vision, but most shows were still in black and white. The Rose Parade the year before was quite stunning to see.

Bedtime had become a thing we did together: I’d doze while he studied into the night, he'd stir me until I woke, and then he would put his books away; we'd dress down in our own rooms, me in my gown and him in his silken pants and shirt, but we'd adjourn to bed together. Me covered with the homespun throw, him covered with a quilt, his arm around me.

What I didn't see then that I do see now is we had fallen into the routine of any other married couple. Everything we did was a semblance of a happy marriage. Rhythm, routine, reason. All of that felt relatively innocent.

The seedy turn happened much later. We decided, with our three days free of school and work, that we would venture away from Anaheim, away from memories that followed us down hallways and through doors. Perhaps it was a form of running away.

It was our version of running away. Perhaps what I should have done was stay and face reality: Kent was gone. He was never coming home. He would never again be there when I opened my eyes or fell ill with a stomach bug. There would be no more ventures to Colorado to enjoy the autumn leaves and the snow.

But, my broken heart didn’t have the capacity for that. I still needed an escape.