The first time I locked my son out of my life, I was sitting in a rocking chair on a mountain porch, wearing an old apron, with a cup of coffee growing cold beside me.
My daughter-in-law, Vanessa, stood twenty feet away in designer sunglasses that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget.
Her parents hovered behind her beside a black luxury SUV, and a small leather suitcase rested on the gravel at her feet.
She was smiling.
That was the thing I remembered most afterward.
She was still smiling when I pressed the little black button in my hand and the enormous iron gate began to close behind her.
“Leah,” she said, her voice carrying that familiar mixture of amusement and irritation, “don’t be ridiculous.
We’re family.”
I looked at the woman who had ordered me out of my son’s house two weeks earlier, less than forty-eight hours after my husband’s funeral.
