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it’s not his fault?” my mother said. “What is not his fault? I’m the one who set this dinner up.”
    Devon turned to look at my mother. His smile was kind. “I think maybe you should’ve told Meg I’d be here.”
    He laughed lightly and so did I. A laugh that was not a laugh. And yet felt nice.
    Then, to my thundering surprise, Devon reached out his hand to cover hers. He stroked it tenderly and rubbed her thumb.
    The room seemed to squeeze in around me. My eyes couldn’t leave those two hands on the table. My mother’s and Devon’s. My mother hadn’t brought me to the Melting Pot to set me up with a polite, eligible pharmacist. She had invited me to meet the man she was dating. A much younger man.
    My mother, the epitome of safety, convention, and temperance, was dating a man closer to my age than hers.
    It took everything in me not to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. Of me, warming up to what I thought were kind advances. I choked back a chortle.
    “I think I need to use the rest room. Excuse me.” I exited the booth as Devon half-stood. As I headed to the rest room, I could hear my mother close behind me.
    When we were behind the closed door, I braced my hands on the granite counter.
    “What was I thinking ?” I exclaimed to myself, but not to myself, aware that a woman washing her hands at the sink looked at me wide eyed.
    “What do you mean?” My mother’s face in the mirror above me was wrapped in confusion.
    “He’s your date!”
    The bewilderment on her face deepened. “I wanted you to meet him. Why is that so odd?”
    “He’s your date,” I said again, incredulous. “And he’s my age!”
    My mother’s face blossomed a pale crimson.
    The woman washing her hands tiptoed past us with a barely audible “Excuse me.” The door closed silently behind her.
    “You … you thought I brought him for you to meet?”
    “How old is he? Thirty-seven? Thirty-six?”
    Her flush on her cheeks deepened to scarlet. “Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s forty-three. He can’t help it if he looks younger than that.”
    Devon’s real age set me off balance mentally, but only for a second.
    “And you are fifty-six.”
    She took a step toward me. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he doesn’t seem to mind that. And for Pete’s sake, Meg, we are just dating. It’s not like I’ve run off to Vegas and eloped with a twenty-year-old.”
    Just dating.
    She’s was just dating a man I thought she was fixing me up with. A kind soul who had, in mere minutes of meeting me, coaxed Florence out of me. A man only thirteen years older than me, thirteen years younger than her.
    “We met at a children’s health conference in February and became friends. We didn’t plan to date. We just started seeing each other and realized we liked each other’s company. We like a lot of the same things. And he knows what it’s like to have your spouse leave you for someone else. He’s been divorced for five years, if you must know.”
    “You’ve been dating him since February? And you never said anything?”
    “This is exactly why I waited to tell you. You’ve never encouraged me to date anyone. All these years, you’ve never asked me if I might want to date again and actually have a life beyond the school and you.”
    My mouth dropped open. “Are you saying I don’t want you to be happy?”
    “That is not what I am saying. It’s just you’ve never … You’ve always made it seem like no one but your dad was good enough for me, even though he left me and married someone else.”
    “That’s not true!” I had no idea what she was talking about. “And he didn’t leave you; you left him!”
    She swallowed. Blinked several times. We had, the two of us, opened something black and ugly. Still.
    “He had an affair.” She said each word calmly but with effort.
    “But he was sorry. He wanted to make it up to you. You wouldn’t let him. You left him.”
    “You’re not married. You don’t know