3
After Cal left and Todd stood staring at the two bowls, two spoons, little syrup pitcher, and crusted saucepan in the kitchen sink, he thought about his mom. Cal had made him feel many things—lust, wonder, admiration, but most of all, guilt. This last emotion Cal had forced easily out of Todd with a single question:
“Why did you wait to come home?”
He referred, of course, to Todd missing his mother’s last moments, when she lay on her deathbed with, Todd supposed, only the angelic Cal to keep her company. He had intended to get home before she passed, so he could hold her tight and whisper in her ear how much he loved her, but he put it off until it was too late.
It was self-pity that made him delay, causing him to miss a moment he could never get back.
But in facing his own mothe
