After eight years alone, I finally brought my new boyfriend home to meet my grown son — and the moment he saw Jason, he went white and whispered, “I don’t want to see him.”

My son knew exactly who he was. He was the doctor from the night my husband d*ed.

PART 1

My name is Linda.

I’m 60, and I honestly believed the romantic part of my life was over.

My husband, Frank, d*ed eight years ago.

He collapsed in our driveway on a Tuesday evening carrying groceries, and by midnight I was a w*dow standing in a hospital hallway holding his car keys.

After that, I had no interest in dating.

I had interest in getting through Tuesdays.

For a long time that was the whole of my ambition.

I kept his reading glasses on the nightstand for three years.

I set two coffee cups out most mornings for the first one, and stopped, and then caught myself doing it again in year four and decided to simply let myself.

Jason worried.

He called every night at nine, from wherever his job had him, and we talked about nothing, and I understood the calls were a rope he was holding one end of.

My friends tried to set me up.

I went to exactly one dinner with a nice retired dentist and spent the whole meal explaining Frank’s lasagna recipe, and the dentist, to his credit, took notes.

Then I met Richard.

He was 62, kind, funny, and never made me feel like I had to become someone younger to be interesting.

We met at the library, of all places, arguing politely over the last copy of a book neither of us ended up finishing.

He had good hands and sad eyes and a way of listening that made you feel like the only radio station in the world.

He’d “left medicine a few years back,” he said, and now did consulting he found boring, and he never elaborated, and I never pushed.

I liked that he didn’t ask about Frank in the first month.

When he finally did, he asked how, not when, and then he asked what Frank had been like, and then he let me talk for an hour and a half about a de*d man, and paid for the coffee.

For six months, we took things slowly.

Coffee became dinner.

Dinner became weekends together.

My son, Jason, was skeptical.

He’s 34 and has always been protective of me, especially since his father d*ed.

“So when do I meet this mystery man?” he kept asking.

“Soon.”

The truth was, I was nervous.

I loved my son.

I was falling in love with Richard.

And I desperately wanted them to like each other.

Finally, at the end of August, Jason invited us over for a barbecue.

Richard seemed nervous on the drive there.

He kept adjusting the vents.

“What if he hates me?”

“He won’t.”

“Sons hate the new man, Linda. It’s practically a job.”

“Jason doesn’t hate anyone. He argues, and then he brings you a plate.”

Jason was in the backyard when we arrived.

The whole street smelled of charcoal and cut grass.

I called his name, and he came around the side of the house, wiping his hands on a towel, sunlight catching the steel watch on his wrist — his father’s watch, the one he’d worn every day since the fun*ral.

“Jason, this is—”

I never finished.

Richard stopped walking.

The color drained from his face.

He stared at my son.

Jason stared back.

Neither of them said a word.

“Richard?”

He took a step backward.

“I need to go.”

I laughed nervously.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t be here.”

He turned toward the car.

I grabbed his arm.

“You’ve been worried about meeting him for weeks. At least say hello.”

Richard looked at Jason again.

Something in his expression frightened me — not anger, nothing like anger; it was the face of a man watching an old accident happen a second time.

“No, Linda.”

His voice dropped.

“I don’t want to see him. I have to go right now.”

He pulled his arm free, got into the car, and drove away without looking back.

I stood in my son’s driveway with a bowl of potato salad in my hands.

Then I turned around.

Jason hadn’t moved.

He was still staring at the empty street, and his face was as white as Richard’s had been.

“Mom,” he said quietly.

“Do you know who that man is?”

“He’s Richard. He’s— Jason, what is going on?”

My son set down the towel.

“That’s the doctor,” he said.

“The one from the night Dad d*ed.”

The potato salad hit the driveway.

I didn’t feel it leave my hands.

 

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