Tiny questions.
They seemed insignificant.
But they were questions I slowly realized almost nobody was asking me.
One afternoon, Tyler came into the store and criticized the sweater I was wearing.
I immediately apologized.
Marcus was shelving books nearby.
He didn’t look at Tyler.
He looked at me.
“Do you like the sweater, Jean?”
Tyler laughed.
“Apparently somebody has to.”
I looked down at myself.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I do.”
Tyler and I broke up three months later.
But there was another person from those years whom I remembered even more clearly.
Marcus’s wife.
She drew ridiculous cartoons on Marcus’s lunch bags.
She taped her favorites beside the register.
Every Thursday, Marcus left work at exactly five.
“Regional meeting,” someone teased once.
Marcus grabbed his coat.
“Dinner with my wife.”
“The meeting’s important, Marcus.”
“They’ll survive.”
Then one Thursday, he didn’t leave.
He sat in his office staring at his phone.
The next week, he barely spoke.
A month later, Marcus left the bookstore completely.
His wife was sick.
He was going home to care for her.
I never saw him again.
Eventually, I heard she had died.
And now, 11 years later, he was sitting at my mother’s dinner table.
I couldn’t stop wondering whether Mom understood what she was stepping into.
Marcus stayed until just after nine.
Mom stood at the door smiling as his car backed out of the driveway.
Then she closed the door and turned toward me.
“Well?”
I looked through the window until Marcus’s taillights disappeared.
Mom’s smile faded when she saw my face.
“Mom, before you get any closer to him, there’s something you need to know.”
She didn’t answer.
So I told her about the bookstore.
I told her about Marcus.
I told her about his wife.
I told her how deeply that marriage had seemed woven into who he was.
Mom listened without interrupting.
Finally, I said what had been sitting in my chest all evening.
“You’ve spent your whole life coming second, Mom.”
Her eyebrows drew together.
“To bills. To work. To Dad when he was still around. To me.”
I swallowed.
“I don’t want you spending the rest of your life competing with someone who isn’t even here.”
Mom didn’t answer.
Instead, she walked into the hallway and took her coat from the hook.
“Put your shoes on, Jean.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
She grabbed her keys.
“I could explain this, but you’d still think I’m making excuses for him.”
She looked at me.
“There’s something you need to see.”
Mom drove for about 15 minutes without explaining anything.
“Are you kidnapping me?”
“Yes.”
“Good to know.”
“You ask too many questions.”
“You raised me, Mom.”
That finally earned a smile.
But she kept driving.
We turned into a community garden tucked behind a small recreation center.
Most of the plots were dark, but strings of warm lights ran along the main path.
Then I saw Marcus.
He was kneeling beside a tomato plant, carefully tying one of its stems to a wooden stake.
Mom lowered her window.
“You’re strangling it.”
Marcus looked up.
“I’m supporting it.”
“It’s leaning away from you.”
“Ungrateful plant,” he said.
I stared at Mom.
“You knew he’d be here?”
“I knew he’d probably be here.”
She parked.
Marcus brushed the dirt from his knees as we approached.
His face softened the moment he saw me.
“Ah.”
I folded my arms.
“That’s reassuring.”
