“So do I.”
“I wish I could undo it.”
“You can’t.”
“I know.”
“But you can make it mean something.”
She looked at me.
“How?”
“By noticing the next time you’re about to decide what someone else needs without asking them.”
She nodded.
“I do that a lot, don’t I?”
“You come by it honestly.”
She smiled.
“You?”
“And your father.”
“I thought Dad was perfect.”
“Oh, please.”
She laughed.
“He could be impossible.”
“Really?”
“Ask me about the wallpaper incident sometime.”
“The wallpaper incident?”
“Forty-three years of marriage contains classified material.”
Her smile faded into something gentler.
“I miss hearing you talk about him.”
I turned toward her.
“You said yesterday it hurt.”
“It does.”
“Both can be true.”
“I’m starting to figure that out.”
She looked toward the dark yard.
“I think I kept wanting everyone else to stop grieving so I wouldn’t have to start.”
