My mother stood at the end of the driveway of our modest ranch house in Spring Dells, Alabama, her right hand covering her heart as she looked at me with a tear glistening in her piercing blue eyes. Tears prickled hot against the corner of my own eyes, threatening to spill over, but it wasn’t because I was upset about leaving home. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, I felt like crying after seeing the beautiful, glimmering heart-shaped diamond dangling around my mother’s neck, but I was pretty sure it was a sign that things in my life weren’t going all that great. A gift from my father, the necklace sparkled against my mother’s tanned skin, an impossible-to-miss reminder of the fantastic relationship my parents shared even after twenty six years of wedded bliss. I figured that should’ve made me happy, glad my parents were still in love when so many other marriages crumbled. But it didn’t.
