1962–2011.
The grass had crept up around the base of the stone. I’d have to tell Dad. Or maybe I'd trim it myself before I left. Give me something to do with my hands.
"Hey, Mom."
The words felt stupid the second they left my mouth. Mom couldn't hear me. She was bones and dust and whatever was left after sixteen years in the ground. But I said it anyway, the way I always did, because some rituals you don't break even when you stop believing in them.
A crow called from somewhere in the trees. The morning's overcast sky was finally clearing.
I thought about her hands. That was what I remembered most. They were always moving, kneading bread dough on Sunday mornings, braiding my hair before school, gripping the steering wheel at ten and two because she said that was the right way and she always did things the right way.
She had calluses on her palms from the garden, dirt under her fingernails that never quite came clean. She wasn't soft, my mother, nor was she delicate. She grew tomatoes and roses and a daughter, and she did it all with her bare hands.
When she got sick, she didn't cry. Not once, not that I saw. She made lists and organized her affairs. Sat with Dad at the kitchen table for hours, going over finances, insurance policies, things I wasn't supposed to hear but heard anyway through the vent in my bedroom floor.
She walked me through the things I'd need to know when she was gone. How to file taxes, change a tire, and make her pie crust, the one with the vodka that made it flaky. How to hold my own when things get hard.
Near the end, she sat on my bed and told me the thing she wished someone had told her at my age. Her hand looked so fragile I was afraid to hold it, but her voice wasn’t. "Life will knock you sideways sometimes, " she said. "Let it. You don’t have to be brave every minute. Just don’t let the world make you smaller than you are. " She squeezed my hand. "There’s a difference between bending and breaking. Learn it. "
I heard her.
I just wasn’t old enough to understand the kind of hurt she was preparing me for.
I sat back on my heels and looked at the sky. The clouds were grey, slivers of thin sunlight was trying to break through. It was the kind of morning that could go either way.
For a moment I just breathed, letting the quiet settle. Then the real world nudged at me, my phone a weight in my pocket. I'd brought it with me without thinking—habit, muscle memory, the leash we all wear now. I pulled it out and turned it on.
More missed calls and texts from Matt. I didn't look at them.
Instead, I opened a new message to Angela.
Have you told him?
I watched three dots appear almost instantly. Disappear. Appear again. Then the flood came.
Elena please I need more time
Bryan just got back from Denver and he's exhausted and I can't do this to him right now
Please just give me until the weekend
I'll tell him I swear I just need a few more days
You don't understand what this will do to him
Please
I didn't finish reading.
Bryan and I had exchanged numbers years ago at some clinic event, back when he was just Angela’s husband and I still thought we were all good people living simple lives.
I found his number, attached the video to a new message, then typed:
I'm so sorry. You deserve to know.
My thumb hovered over the send button.
I thought about Bryan. Steady, quiet Bryan who always showed up at clinic events with a patient smile and a hand on Angela’s back. A man who looked at his wife like she was his whole world, and who had no idea what was waiting for him on the other side of that message.
