Your mother is dead. What good is crying going to do? Is it going to bring her back? Hurry up and get dinner ready. My friends will be here soon. Those were the first words my husband said to me. It had been exactly 2 hours since I had returned home from my mother’s funeral. My husband forced me to cook for his party on the very day she was buried. It all felt like a never-ending nightmare until a man showed up and told my husband, “Everyone who’s anyone in this town knows exactly who your mother-in-law was—everyone but you.” After that night, everything changed forever. The sound of the car engine cutting off echoed with an unnatural sharpness in the silence of the cold garage.
The afternoon sun beat down as if mocking the gray sky that blanketed my heart. It had only been 2 hours. I had just left Oakidge Cemetery, where the cold body of my mother, Mrs. Eleanor Vance, my only family, had become one with the damp reddish earth. The scent of chrysanthemums and the smell of wet soil seemed to linger in my nostrils, mixing with the salty taste of dried tears on my cheeks. I got out of the car with heavy steps as if I were wearing shackles on my ankles. All I wanted was to go to my room, lock the door, and hug the pillow she had left me so I could release the rest of the tears that constricted my chest.
But before my hand could touch the front doorknob, the impatient voice of my husband, Mark, shattered the silence. Mark was frowning, glancing at his expensive wristwatch. He didn’t look like a man who had just lost his mother-in-law. There was no trace of pain on his face. On the contrary, his eyes shone with a strange mix of excitement and restlessness. He rushed to open the trunk of the car and pulled out several large grocery bags that I didn’t know when he had bought. I stood motionless on the porch, staring blankly at the pots with my mother’s favorite orchids, which were beginning to wilt from not being watered since the morning.