“That doesn’t explain candles.”
“I panicked.”
She laughed again.
They ate at nearly eleven o’clock.
The roast was a little dry.
The mashed potatoes had gone stiff around the edges.
The cake was too sweet.
Gordon would remember it as one of the best meals of his life.
They talked about ordinary things.
A neighbor’s new dog.
A teacher at Gordon’s school who kept losing her classroom keys.
The price of eggs.
A photograph Dorothy had found of Gordon wearing a cowboy hat when he was six.
Nothing important.
And somehow everything important.
Around midnight, Gordon carried the dishes to the sink.
His mother stood beside him drying them.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I know.”
When he left, Dorothy walked him to the porch.
“Drive carefully.”
“I will.”
“And don’t worry about tonight anymore.”
He hugged her.
Not the quick sideways hug he usually gave her.
A real one.
He could feel how small she had become.
“Friday,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Next Friday. Dinner again.”
Dorothy smiled.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Six o’clock?”
“Five-thirty.”
That became their night.
Every Friday, Gordon went to his mother’s house.
Sometimes Dorothy cooked.
Sometimes he brought sandwiches.
Once they ate frozen pizza because the roast burned while they were talking on the porch.
Gordon stopped taking Friday evening shifts.
When the school office asked why, he simply said, “I have somewhere I need to be.”
His coworkers probably assumed he had started dating.
He never corrected them.
Months later, Gordon’s daughter asked why he had suddenly become so strict about Friday dinners with Grandma.
He showed her a photograph he had taken that first night.
Dorothy in her blue dress.
The little chocolate cake.
Two plates on the table.
His daughter stared at it for a long time.
“She waited that whole time?”
“Four hours.”
“Was she mad?”
Gordon shook his head.
“That would’ve been easier.”
His daughter looked confused.
Gordon put the photograph back into his wallet.
“Someday you’ll understand.”
Because regret does not always arrive after someone is gone.
Sometimes it gives you a warning.
Sometimes it looks like a porch light left on too late.
A cold dinner.
A woman in her best blue dress trying not to admit she felt forgotten.
And sometimes, if you’re lucky, life gives you enough time to walk through the door and do better.
The people who spent their lives waiting for us should never have to wonder whether we still have time for them.
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