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Why had she quit her job again? A secure job. One with a guaranteed pension. That, along with her Social Security, would give her plenty of security even if her daughters never moved back home.
Her empty nest had been hard for the last two years since her youngest daughter graduated from college and moved out permanently.
Sure, the girls came home for holidays, most of them anyway, and sometimes for birthdays. Definitely for Pam’s. But they had lives of their own, careers they cared about, and friends and hobbies that didn’t include their mother anymore.
Pam really wasn’t bothered by it most of the time. After all, she wouldn’t want her children to be stuck at home, afraid to go out and do anything or go anywhere.
Although, she really wouldn’t mind spending more time with them. And wouldn’t have minded at all if they had chosen to stay at home and start their careers there.
She missed them.
Maybe that was why she had done what she did.
Was this what a midlife crisis looked like?
“Hey there.”
The voice made her smile. Mark somehow always steadied her nerves. She’d been through the typical teenage drama and angst that every parent had gone through. Mark had spent more than one evening sitting at her table after the girls had gone to bed talking her down from a limb. Reminding her that everything passed, that a catastrophe today was something to laugh at tomorrow.
She appreciated his down-to-earth sensibility and the way he always made her problems seem like they weren’t quite as bad as what she thought they were.
She wasn’t sure how he was going to make her mother’s reaction something that wasn’t terrifying to her or convince her that she would eventually laugh at it, but if anyone could do it, Mark could.
“Hey,” she said, trying not to sound depressed and petrified. The way she felt.
He finished walking out across his small back porch and sat down on the steps, on his side, with a good two feet between them.
They’d always been friends and nothing more. She appreciated his friendship more than she could say. Even now, knowing that she had just done something ridiculously dumb, just having him beside her made her feel... If not the smartest person in the world, at least like the repercussions of this day weren’t the worst things that could happen to her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, not with alarm in his voice but with the confidence of someone who knew her.
Sometimes she loved having a friend who knew her so well that he knew something was wrong without words, and at other times, like now, it was a pain. What was she going to tell him?
“Just spit it out. I know you’re sitting there wondering how you’re going to tell me, and don’t worry about it. Just tell me flat out.”
She huffed out a breath and shook her head, looking over at him with a half-smile, half-exasperated look on her face. “Really? You have to read my mind today?”
“Pretty sure that’s my job, isn’t it?”
“No. Your job is to plant flowers and trees and make people’s yards look beautiful. I’m pretty sure life counseling isn’t in your job description.”
His hands, work roughened and brown, rested on his leg while his boots were firmly planted on the step.
She always wondered why he didn’t get married again. When she stopped to think about it, he was handsome. And kind, considerate, and sensitive. He was funny too and levelheaded. He had dated occasionally, different moms who were single and classmates of her daughters, but nothing ever stuck.
She wondered why.
Funny thing to wonder about now. Probably it was her brain trying to come up with a way to not answer his question.
“I do all those things, and I provide life counseling to a very elite group of people. Actually, that group includes just you.”
“I can’t complain about your life counseling. It’s always been right on for me. But I feel bad that you even have to do it.”
“I just like being involved in your life.”
He was humble too. He was always able to give her good advice, because he was wise. He spent a lot of time with the Lord and in His Word, and that had a tendency to make a person wise.
“What did you do?”
