Fourteen
The rattle of a key in the lock gave Jake and his brothers a short heads up that their mother was home. Jake felt a rush of relief. Mom was home. He’d missed her more than he realized since his transfer to DC.
“Well.”
Jake looked up from the bowl of her soup he’d been dozing over and waited for her scrutiny to make its way to him. He looked like his mother, he’d been told, while his brothers were near carbon copies of their dad. Jake didn’t see it himself, except maybe in the eyebrows; hers tended to run amok, too, and he had her blue eyes.
She was tall and thin, almost as tall as Jake, with a narrow, clever face and hair that had turned gray when their father died. She’d been sad for a long time, but that had given way to acceptance and a serenity that became her sons’ anchor
