Page 52 of Love is a Game

Tuck goes to prepare breakfast. He even seems relieved when I linger behind. And he’s right—if I want to get back to the city, I need to get started on this stuff.

I sit at Mom’s computer. The screen hums to life, casting a glow over the desk.

I press my fingers where hers should be and type in her password—the one she’d neatly noted on a Post-it tucked beneath the lace doily. I guess practicality trumps security in a small town.

Opening her history, I click through to Facebook. It’s been ages since I’ve used this platform, and her feed is a blur of cute animal rescues, gardening hacks, and fitness ads. Where are the actual posts from friends? Or is it just that…she didn’t have any?

I check her profile.

Then I reel back in surprise. Holy shit: 338

What the actual? My mom, Ms. Reserved-Keep-to-Herself, had 338 friends?

Scrolling further, the answer hits me in a flood of tagged posts.

Photos. Tons of them. My mother, smiling, arms linked with other women. At fundraisers. At community events. Holding a raffle ticket, planting trees, standing behind a bake sale table. Even at a wedding, next to a radiant bride and groom, wearing her blue dress!

I blink. She’s laughing in some, hugging people in others. There’s even one of her with a Santa hat perched awkwardly on her head, surrounded by kids, their faces blurred out for privacy.

And most of it stems from the Newcombe Safe Haven page.

I hesitate, hovering over the name. Then I click, and the pinned post on their page stops me cold. It’s an image of my mother, standing beside a table draped in white linen, a microphone in hand.

The caption reads: “A tragic loss for our community. Our dear friend and longtime volunteer, Caitlyn Miller, passed away earlier this week. We are heartbroken.”

Hundreds of comments follow. And I sit back, stunned.

The roadside tribute. All those flowers. It was these women—people connected with the shelter.

I swallow.

I’d always seen my mother as a quiet woman, someone who faded into the background. But here, in these photos, she’s at the center of everything. Speaking. Leading.Loved.

Forever later, when Tuck comes to find me, I look up, dazed, falling out of this bizarre new world…of piecing together the life she built outside of me. A whole life I never knew existed.

This vibrant, smiling, impactful woman was real. And yet, she feels like a stranger, a version of my mother so foreign it’s like glimpsing a parallel world—one I had no place in.

And now, I’m the one left to close it down. To sever her ties to these people. To end her virtual life along with her physical one.

Tuck places his hands on my shoulders, wrapping me in the even rhythm of his breath, the comforting arc of his body enclosing mine, as I stare at my mother’s image, suspended on the screen.

The fabric between these multiple worlds suddenly feels flimsy and transparent. My mother smiling back at me from another dimension, forever frozen in time.

Looking into her bright eyes, I feel her all around me, her DNA embedded in every inch of this house. The years collapse in on themselves as I sit at this old study desk, drifting back to the innocent naivety of childhood, when life stretched out like an open road, endless and brimming with possibility.

I used to think reaching thirty was light-years away, filled with adventure, career, lovers…and one day, the man I would marry. The children I would have. The family I would build. My mother as a grandmother.Someday.

But life is not as infinite as it once felt. Now, fifty-five is a blink. My mother’s life, snuffed out like a birthday candle.

Life is more fragile and fleeting than I ever let myself believe. I don’t have forever. I have now.

Despite everything I’ve built—my career, my success. What do I really have? No family. Few close friends. No child. No one to pass anything down to. The contents of this house, Mom’s house, feel like the end of the line.

I always thought life was a long, steady climb, but it isn’t. It’s a collection of moments, choices, chances you either take or let slip away.

And now, I see it. I’ve spent my whole life waiting for approval, for permission, for some invisible judge to tell me I was doing it right.

But there’s no one left to judge me. Only me.

---