Daughters for a Time by Jennifer Handford

the two of them considering each other like a found treasure.
    “Your mother and I had three things in common. One, I was the first in my family to go to college and she was the first in hers. Two, we both had rocky upbringings, both with our fathers. Maybe you never knew that.” Larry clenched his fist, spread his fingers, clenched his fist again. “And three, we both wanted a family of our own so that we could do things right.”
    I thought about that, how they wanted to raise their children differently than how they themselves had been raised.
    Larry went on. “We dated, got married during Christmas break. Your mother was pregnant with Claire soon after that. She decided to drop out of school. I always felt bad about that. But she wanted to. Nobody was going to take care of her baby but her. When I graduated, I went to work for MetLife. A year or so later, we tried to have another baby, but we had a hard time.”
    “She once told me about a miscarriage she had after Claire.”
    Larry nodded. “Five years later, you came along. Your mother was so happy to have another baby. She really wanted a sibling for Claire. We lived in a small apartment and money was tight, but during those early years, I can say that we were truly happy. For a number of years, I worked in the afternoon and evening, sitting down with folks around their kitchen tables, showing them how much insurance they needed. It wasn’t so bad and I got to be home in the mornings with you girls. Your mother had gone back to work part-time. Those mornings with you kids were some of the happiest times in my life.” His mouth twitched, and then he looked away.
    “We were happy for a lot of years,” he said. “Then I went and screwed it all up. I had an affair.”
    “Why’d you have the affair?” I asked. I took a swig of beer, savored the bitter malt and sweet caramel, felt it travel down my chest and into my stomach.
    “There’s no reason. None that makes sense. I was just a fool. The woman made me feel like I was young and wanted.”
    “And Mom?”
    “She was devastated, but didn’t want a divorce.”
    “Always a good Catholic,” I said.
    “That’s about the size of it,” Larry said. “She said that she wouldn’t disgrace her children by getting a divorce. So we stayed married, but she also stayed mad. I was at a loss to make things better. Then, Met was looking for a group of guys to go open an office in Philadelphia. I’d be gone for a couple of months. I took it, thinking that I was doing something good for your mother—giving her some space. What I should have done was stay home and work harder at our marriage. At the time, I thought I was making the right decision.”
    “Then what?” I asked.
    “By the time I got home, your mother had lost faith in me—on many levels. Looked at me like I was less than the man she had married. I guess, after that, I met her halfway by becoming less and less, until she no longer remembered that I was ever anything more.”
    Larry’s face twisted. His hands formed into fists, the white of his knuckles popping like X-ray images.
    “Then she got sick,” he said. “And that was that.”
    I watched Larry’s eyes well up, and then he shook his head.
    I nodded. The emotion was rising in me like milk warming on the stove. I figured I had about five seconds to get the hell out of there before I bubbled over, making a mess that would be hard to clean up.
    “I’ve got to go,” I said, putting down the beer bottle on the coaster. “Thanks.”
    “Helen,” he said, following me to the door. “I’m glad you came.”
    I nodded, looked at him for a split second, wondered whether it was my wet eyes that made his look wet, too, and then ran to my car.
    Once upon a time, I thought as I drove away, we were just an average family—a mom and dad, two daughters. Then my father left and my mother died and my sister and I were heavy with grief. Maybe those things were average, too. Maybe heartache was more