“You’re getting a nice one,” Sophie said firmly, pulling me into a little boutique in town. “Dad would want you to have a nice one.”
“Dad thinks khakis are formal wear.”
“That’s exactly why he left it to me.”
We found it in the third store. Pale blue. The color of the lake on a clear morning. Simple and soft, with short sleeves and a skirt that moved when I walked.
I came out of the dressing room, and Sophie put both hands over her mouth.
“Mom,” she said. “Oh, Mom.”
I looked in the mirror. I didn’t look twenty-five. I looked like a woman who’d been married for twenty-six years. Who’d had a baby and buried her parents and stayed up through a thousand hard nights. Who had lines around her eyes from laughing and lines on her forehead from worrying.
I looked like me.
