Junior Matchmakers
I stared at the notepad by the telephone. It looked like Mom had written down a name. A man’s name: Al Berty. I sometimes doodled the names of boys I liked in my junior-high notebooks. I showed my sister, Shelby. “Mom has a crush!” she exclaimed.
Our parents had divorced a decade ago. Dad remarried, but de-spite our frequent urging for Mom to find love, she insisted she didn’t want a boyfriend. Now we knew different. “Who is Al Berty?” I said, waving the pad when Mom came home from work.
Mom cocked her head. She said she had no idea what she had scribbled. She also denied knowing anyone named Al Berty. Shelby and I were not convinced and decided to
