I pressed my hand against the sleeve.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said aloud.
For nearly two years, talking to him when no one was around had embarrassed me.
That day, it did not.
“I thought you were supposed to leave clearer instructions.”
The room, predictably, offered no answer.
“I suppose ‘have a life’ was clear enough.”
I sat on the bed.
There was something I had not admitted to anyone.
Selling the house had frightened me.
Keeping it had frightened me too.
Because either choice seemed to say something permanent about Robert.
Sell it, and perhaps I was leaving him behind.
Keep it, and perhaps I was admitting I could not move forward.
Now I understood both ideas were wrong.
Robert was not the building.
He had never been the building.
He was in Gregory’s habit of checking tire pressure before long drives.
In Brenda’s ridiculous insistence that every sandwich be cut diagonally.
