This was supposed to be our first quiet Easter after losing my mom, just me keeping my head down while my husband handled dinner. Then I checked the kitchen camera from the grocery store parking lot and saw something that sent me flying home.
This was our first Easter without my mom, and I was barely holding myself together.
I told my husband I could not do Easter this year.
“I mean it,” I said that morning, standing in the kitchen with my coat still on. “No guests. No dinner. No pretending this is normal.”
Liam looked up from the coffee maker. “Then do not pretend.”
“I took the day off. I will make dinner.”
I let out a tired laugh. “That is not how Easter works.”
“It can this year.”
Liam came over, took my face in both hands, and kissed my forehead. “I took the day off. I will make dinner.”
I blinked at him. “You?”
He looked offended. “I can cook.”
“You can heat things.”
I almost started crying right there.
That got the smallest smile out of me, which was probably his goal. Still, I nodded and grabbed my purse. “I just need to get out for a while. Maybe groceries. Maybe a drive. I don’t know.”
Liam touched my arm. “Take your time.”
I almost started crying right there.
That first year without my mom had been awful in quiet ways.
Reaching for my phone to call her. Seeing lemons and thinking of the cake she made every Easter in the same square glass dish with too much glaze on top because she never believed in restraint.
I opened the kitchen camera on my phone.
Grief is exhausting because it keeps showing up in ordinary places.
So I drove to the grocery store and sat in the parking lot longer than I needed to. I watched people carry hams and flowers and foil pans into their cars.
Instead, I opened the kitchen camera on my phone. We had installed it last year after a pipe issue. I told myself I was only checking to make sure Liam had not started a fire.
At first, it almost made me smile.
A second later, the doorbell rang.
My husband had flour all over his black T-shirt. One ham was hanging halfway off the roasting pan. He was staring into a mixing bowl like it had offended him.
“Come on,” Liam muttered. “This cannot be that hard.”
He picked up his phone, typed something, then looked toward the front window.
A second later, the doorbell rang.
I frowned.
A woman stepped into view.
I turned up the volume.
Liam wiped his hands on a dish towel and hurried out of frame. I heard the front door open.
Then I saw her. A woman stepped into view carrying a glass dish covered in foil.
My whole body locked up.
Same height. Same green eyes. Same mouth. Same little line near the chin. Even the way she held the dish with both hands hit me right in the chest.
“I don’t know how she is going to survive this.”
It was MY mother.
Not close to her. Not sort of like her.
My mother.
I stopped breathing.
And at taht moment, she was standing in my kitchen while my husband took the dish from her and pulled her into a hug like they already knew each other.
I got out so hard I nearly forgot to shut the car door.
I heard him say, low and strained, “I don’t know how she is going to survive this when she finds out the truth.”
That was enough.
I threw my phone onto the passenger seat and slammed my foot on the gas.
When I turned into the driveway, Liam was already coming out the front door. His face was pale.
“Emily, wait.”
I got out so hard I nearly forgot to shut the car door.
“I know how that sounds.”
“Who is in my house?”
“Please,” Liam said, coming down the walkway. “Please just let me explain this the right way.”
“The right way would have been not inviting my dead mother over for Easter.”
His face twisted. “I know how that sounds.”
I pushed past him and went inside.
The kitchen smelled like ham, sugar, and lemon.
“Do not say another word unless it is the truth.”
The woman standing by the table turned slowly. Her eyes filled as soon as she saw me.
“Emily,” she said softly.
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