Friends invited him to dinners where a single woman always happened to be seated beside him.
He declined every offer.
Once, I suggested that Mom would not have wanted him to spend the rest of his life alone.
He looked at me with an expression I could not forget.
“I am not alone, Lola,” he said. “I have you.”
That answer broke my heart more than I let him see.
Then, almost overnight, everything changed.
He joined dating apps.
I first noticed when I visited him one Saturday afternoon.
He was sitting at the kitchen table with his phone in both hands.
His reading glasses rested low on his nose, and he was smiling at the screen.
My father had not smiled like that in years.
