“You’re my mother!”
“I know. But I didn’t want to remind you of the days when we had nothing.”
Dad approached them carrying his battered old bucket.
“Morning, June.”
Brent turned sharply.
“You know my mother?”
Dad nodded.
“Of course. She likes yellow squash and small red potatoes. Been coming here a year and a half.”
Brent looked as though the ground had vanished beneath him.
“I reported your garden,” he confessed. “I told the county it was disgusting. I wanted them to force you to destroy it.”
“I know,” Dad answered quietly.
“Did you know she was my mother?”
“No. I knew her as June, a widow who needed vegetables. That’s all I needed to know.”
Brent sank onto the gravel.
He buried his face in his hands.
And then, in front of everyone, he began explaining something none of us expected.
As a child, Brent had grown up in a rundown trailer after his father suffered a disabling injury.
