“She wanted you to have it,” Randall says. He holds it out, between us.
What can you say to that?
I move my hip from blocking the doorway. “Come in,” I say.
I let him scooch around me. He looks really good—he’s lost a few pounds and just had a haircut. And he smells even better: woodsy, warm, and clean. I can’t take a chance he’ll “accidentally” touch his hand against mine in the hand-over.
The cutting board is made of walnut. I already have two: one I got for my first apartment before we met, one I got when I cleaned out Nan’s house, but I don’t tell Randall that. I flash back to the first Thanksgiving we went over to Mama Lainie’s. She put me to work paring and dicing the celery, which was a relief because that’s about all I knew how to do. Mama Lainie was always great that way—she could size you up without making you feel weird about it and place you exactly where you’d do your best work.
Randall sits it on the counter next to the juicer.
“You got new Formica,” he says. Never content to just let it be. “When’d you get that?”
It had been after the settlement, about ten months, that I’d ordered the new, brighter white counters with the gray mica chips that glimmer, but that’s not what he means. He means: Who put those in for you?
“That’s really none of your business anymore,” I say. He doesn’t need to know I haven’t been dating anyone seriously since we split.
“Fair enough,” he ducks his head like a wounded bird, his voice tight. What he really means: Can’t you ever answer a simple question?
The cutting board is shaped like a family crest: a little bigger on top, a little rounded on the bottom. That first Thanksgiving, Mama Lainie had diced the onions, and we had a good laugh over both of us tearing up over the Vidalias when they’re supposed to be so sweet.
Randall and I stand around, like a bunch of goofs. I’d paused The White Lotus I’d been watching when the knock came to the door, so there is nothing but the two of us and the tick of the clock above the sink. At the table, my cornflakes float in their milk-bath bowl in front of my laptop, getting mushier and mushier as Randall and I try to talk to each other.
“You still have it,” he says. I don’t need to see where he’s pointing.
Mama Lainie had gifted us the clock for our housewarming party.
“Well, it still works.” Even if we don’t anymore.
I hear the Riggins next door—Mrs. Riggins always beeps her horn three short taps when leaving for work. It’s a signal for her son, Thomas, to gather his schoolbooks and hustle outside to wait for the bus. I go to ask Randall why it’s so important that I get this cutting board at 6:30 in the morning, but I see the sorrow in his eyes and bite my lip shut.
“Mrs. Riggins still corralling Thomas,” he says about the beeps.
I nod.
“I’m really sorry,” I hear myself say. “I didn’t know she was sick or I’d have gone to visit.”
You can usually count on the rumor mill to clue you in on pretty much everything, but I’d been working double shifts, I’d been walking around half-dead in my skin and hadn’t been paying attention to much of anything back when Randall and I first fell apart.
“Thank you,” he says, quietly.
“Thank you,” he repeats.
That first Thanksgiving, Mama Lainie had called me over to the stove and taught me how to take stock and make delicious turkey gravy. That wasn’t all she’d taught me—her breakfast casserole is still a hit at potlucks at work.
“What?” he asks. “What are you smiling at?”
“Nothing,” I say, a bit embarrassed. I hadn’t realized I’d been smiling. “It was just…I was remembering how she always played Dolly Parton as we cooked.”
“Nobody’s a bigger Dolly fan than Mama.” His smile is soft. Dare I say gentle? I know him enough to know he’d welcome an embrace, and my arms ache to give him what he wants.
I cross my arms. Snap out of it. I remind myself of the snotty, accusatory messages he’d left on my answering machine, half-drunk as a skunk at 2 am, reproaching me for cheating when I’d done no such thing.
It’s not cheating to friend your middle-school classmate from years and years ago and like his post about his new house; I’ll tell anybody that.
“I’ll give you that,” I say, remembering the time we surprised her with tickets to a Dolly concert for her birthday, and she’d almost passed out in the lobby from excitement.
“Everybody loves Dolly, and everybody loves Mama Lainie,” I say, careful to use present tense, because it hasn’t really been that long and because I know it won’t hurt Randall as much as past tense.
“There’ll never be another woman as sweet as your Mama.” I say. Not to get him riled up or anything, but just because it’s the truth and sometimes the truth needs saying. Out loud.
“You were always her favorite. Out of anybody CarrieLynne and I brought home, she loved you most.”
“I don’t know about favorite, but the love was certainly mutual.”
“Listen,” Randall says, “I—I think, well, it’s not the easiest thing to say, but Molly, I think I made a mistake.”
I look away. Here we go. Why couldn’t he have said this two years ago? The clock’s tick just gets heavier than heavy, a metronome rattling through my chest. I almost can’t stand it.
“You think you made a mistake?” I ask, really low, keeping my eyes fixed on the clock and not his handsome face. “Just one?”
“Now, I wouldn’t call that exactly fair,” he begins, his tone sharp. We’re back in safer waters.
I venture a glance into his green eyes. “Well, that’s one of many ways you and I still differ.”
“That’s just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” he says.
Is it possible for a person to lose their beloved mama and manage to look even more hang-dog over something they’ve just heard?
And I did this. I brought this further pain to Randall’s face. Again.
Some things we just have to live with, I remind myself.
He turns and walks to the door.
“Randall,” I call, not following him. Keeping my back to the sink, the tick of the clock still thudding a freight-chain vibration through my chest.
“I’ll always be sorry…about Mama Lainie.”
He nods.
An hour later, after I’ve restarted the episode twice because I can’t concentrate on a blessed thing, I give in and go straight to the counter. I run my palm lovingly over the beautiful worn wood, over the grooves and divots of happy memories and sad ones, too, all times spent together.
When I flip over the cutting board, I notice a pale pink sticky note up near the top. My name, In Mama Lainie’s clear, Kindergarten-teacher handwriting, and then: When you get a second chance, take it.
***
A few days later, I drive off from the Goodwill. I’d tucked the cutting board into the middle of a bag of soft sweaters and some dresses it’s high time to pass along to a new home. Before I change my mind.
Mama Lainie was a sweetheart, there’s no question, but she didn’t have to live inside her son’s jealousy or the ways I kept managing to hurt his feelings.
“I’m awfully sorry, Mama Lainie. I love you, I do, but I don’t need cutting boards anymore. You know what I mean,” I say to the car interior.
I blast some Dolly. “Here You Come Again.” Mama’s favorite.
Melanie Faith is a poet, photographer, writer, educator, daydreamer, and frequent doodler. Her poetry collection, Does It Look Like Her?, follows Alix, a forty-something artist. Her next poetry book, The Price of Breathing, will be published by Vine Leaves Press in fall 2026. Learn more: https://www.melaniedfaith.com/ .