“The way she spoke to you. Before any of this.”
I remembered Lucia adjusting my hair before a dinner while Sabrina commented that a shorter style might make me look less desperate.
“You were there to do your job.”
“I was also your friend.”
I reached up and took her hand.
“You came when I called.”
She pressed her lips together, then nodded.
When she finished, she turned the chair so I could see the back.
It was short. Unfamiliar. Entirely mine.
I paid her for the appointment this time, including the one she had refused to charge me for on the wedding morning.
Then we went out for lunch.
I wore no wig.
I expected people to stare. A few did. Most were occupied with their own conversations, their own children, their own cooling soup.
The ordinary indifference of that restaurant felt like a gift.
Spring came slowly.
Avery completed the new estate documents, and I signed them without ceremony. We also began the housing program while I was alive to see it work.
I chose the first duplex I had bought after Richard died.
It needed new plumbing, safer stairs, and enough work to make the contractor sigh when he opened the basement door.
For once, I did not apologize for wanting something expensive.
Michael offered to help.
“You can volunteer,” I said. “The program manager decides what needs doing.”
He spent his first Saturday removing old shelving.
His second, carrying boxes.
He never asked to put his name on the project.
One afternoon, I found him sitting on the back steps with a paper cup of water. His shirt was damp with sweat.
“I used to hate this place,” he said.
I sat beside him.
“You waited here for me too often.”
“I thought every hour you spent fixing it was an hour you chose over me.”
I watched a sparrow land on the fence.
“Sometimes I did choose work when I could have come home,” I said. “I was afraid all the time. Work gave me something I could do with the fear.”
He nodded slowly.
“But sometimes the choice was this building or our groceries.”
“I understand that now.”
“You were allowed to be lonely, Michael. You weren’t allowed to punish me forever for it.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I’m working on that.”
I knew he had begun seeing a therapist. He had told me once, without turning it into a request for praise.
We sat until the workers inside began switching off the lights.
Then he asked if I wanted to get dinner.
