“I was trying to get there.”
“I know that now.”
Grace turned toward him. “You knew it then.”
Raymond looked down.
That was the true wound.
He had known Grace was traveling. He had known delays and duty had complicated her departure. He had known she had arranged care, visits, calls. Still, grief had taken the one unbearable fact–Grace was not present when her mother died–and sharpened it into a judgment about everything that came before.
“I knew the facts,” he said. “I didn’t want the facts. I wanted somebody to have chosen differently so your mother wouldn’t be dead when I woke up.”
Grace closed her eyes.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“No.”
“Mom was sick.”
“I know.”
“Me being there wouldn’t have cured her.”
“I know.”
Grace started crying then, silently and angrily.
Raymond did not touch her.
That was wise.
“You made me feel like I had to apologize for every hour I wasn’t there,” she said. “Even the hours Mom told me to go back to work.”
Raymond’s face crumpled.
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
He swallowed.
“Then tell me what to say.”
Grace wiped her face.
“Nothing yet. Just hear it.”
So he did.
She told him what the funeral sentence had done. How she had stood in front of her closet holding her uniform and then put on the black dress because she could not bear another confrontation on the day they buried her mother. How she had felt disloyal to her career for hiding it and disloyal to her father for having it. How every successful mission afterward had carried a faint echo of his accusation.
Raymond listened.
When Grace finished, he was crying too.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Not because you flew today. Not because you saved me. I was wrong before any of that happened.”
