“We could do it.”
Brenda turned.
“You don’t know how to cook a ham.”
“I know how to purchase one.”
The room filled with laughter.
Something inside me loosened.
This was what I had wanted without knowing how to ask for it.
Not distance.
Not obedience.
Not guilt.
Room.
Room for someone else to host Easter badly.
Room for my children to solve their own inconveniences.
Room for me to miss Robert without managing everyone else’s reaction to it.
Room to be their mother without making motherhood my entire remaining identity.
Later that night, Brenda found me on the porch.
She carried two blankets.
Instead of placing one over my knees automatically, she held it out.
“Want one?”
The question was so small I almost cried.
“Yes.”
She sat beside me.
For a while, we listened to the ocean.
Then she said, “I keep thinking about yesterday morning.”
