He nodded. His hands lay open on the table between us.
“I wanted everybody to be comfortable,” he said. “And I made you pay for it.”
I looked out the café window until I could breathe evenly.
“Yes.”
He learned to let that answer stand.
Beth came by in April with a box of photographs Tara had accidentally packed. She returned every one, including the faded picture of Cole asleep on Walt’s chest.
Before leaving, she lingered in the doorway.
“I knew you weren’t happy that night. I laughed because everybody else did.”
“I know.”
“I keep wishing I’d been different.”
“Next time someone is standing alone, you can be.”
She nodded, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
We began meeting for lunch occasionally. Without Tara directing every conversation, Beth turned out to be funny and shy and very interested in gardening.
Her father sent a written apology and reimbursed a documented expense his daughter’s move had left behind. Her mother apologized separately, without asking me to withdraw anything or soften my account.
I accepted their apologies. We did not become close.
Ruth became a regular Sunday dinner guest.
I moved back into the larger bedroom, choosing yellow curtains Walt would have called impractical. I planted herbs in the chipped pots Tara had hidden behind the shed.
The first time I invited friends over, I made soup.
Nobody photographed it.
When the divorce was final, Cole told me over the phone. Then he asked about the tomatoes.
I was grateful that he understood I had a life beyond what had happened.
By autumn, he was coming to dinner once a month. He asked before opening cupboards. He brought food he had cooked himself, sometimes badly.
One evening, he turned my old chair upside down to tighten a loose joint.
“There’s writing under here,” he said.
I stood in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel in my hands.
“What writing?”
He leaned closer, then went quiet.
I crossed the room.
Beneath the seat, beside a repair bracket, Walt had written in his square carpenter’s pencil:
Sandra’s chair. Level this one first.
