Grace sat on the edge of the bed.
“It’s not stupid.”
“No. But I can’t rescue a whole marriage one object at a time.”
That was the most self-aware thing she had ever heard him say.
“What are you going to do?”
“Come stay with your brother until they let me back. And try not to make him insane.”
“Ambitious.”
Raymond laughed.
The sound felt unfamiliar and old at the same time.
When residents were allowed to return under supervision, Grace went with Raymond only because she was off duty and he asked as a daughter, not as a pilot.
The house had survived.
The yard was scorched. One side of the porch was blackened. Smoke had entered everything. Inside, soot lay across furniture in a fine gray layer.
Raymond stopped in the doorway.
Grace waited.
Her mother was everywhere and nowhere: a coat on a hook, a ceramic bowl near the door, a stack of gardening magazines, the worn place on the arm of the couch.
“I thought if the house burned,” Raymond said, “I’d lose her again.”
Grace understood why he had stayed angry now.
Not completely. Understanding was not absolution.
But she saw the structure of it. Her mother’s death had been an event Raymond could not control. Grace’s career was visible, movable, arguable. He had attached grief to it because blame could be held in the hands more easily than helplessness.
They began sorting what could be cleaned.
In a bedroom closet, Raymond pulled down a metal document box.
“This is what I was thinking about on the radio,” he said.
Grace stiffened.
“I thought you said Mom’s things.”
“They are. Mostly. Letters. Papers. Photographs.”
He set the box on the bed and opened it.
Grace almost told him she did not want another discovery engineered into an apology. Then she saw the top folder.
Her name was written in her mother’s handwriting.
Raymond did not touch it.
“I’ve known that folder was in here for years,” he said.
