“Yes,” he said. “You were always allowed.”
“I didn’t know that,” Joseph said. “She seemed very far away when she was sitting there. Like she was somewhere else.” He was quiet for a moment. “She used to read to me sometimes. When she was having a better day. She did the voices and everything, different ones for each character.” A small pause. “She was funny when she did that. I didn’t know she was funny until she did the voices.”
“She was funny,” Harper said. “She had a very dry sense of humor but didn’t show it often. Though when she did it was genuinely good.”
Joseph looked at him. “You don’t talk about her very much.”
“I know,” Harper said. “I should do it more.”
“Why don’t you?”
Harper considered the honest answer, which was that talking about her meant navigating the territory between what was true and what was useful for a ten-year-old boy to know, and that the navigation was difficult enough that he had largely avoidedit rather than do it badly. But Joseph was asking the question directly and deserved a direct answer.
“Because there are parts of it that are hard to talk about,” he said, “and I have not always known how to talk about the other parts without the hard ones coming through. And I wanted you to have the good memories without me putting shadows on them.”
Joseph thought about this seriously. “The good memories are mine,” he said. “You don’t have to manage them. I’m not going to lose them just because some of it was hard.”
“Your mother loved you,” he said. “I want you to know that, because it was true and because it was not always easy for her and she did it anyway. I remember that she used to check on you at night after you were asleep.”
Joseph was quiet. He was looking at the path ahead with an expression that was trying to be composed and not quite getting all the way there.
“I didn’t know that,” Joseph said again, after a moment.
“I know,” Harper said. “I should have told you sooner.”
They rode in silence for a while. It was the comfortable kind, or close enough to it, the kind that had something being processed inside it rather than avoided. The park was beginning to showthe first signs of the day arriving, a couple of early walkers in the distance, the light getting warmer and less pale.
“If we go back to Sedgewick,” Joseph said eventually, picking up the earlier thread with the persistence he had when he wasn’t finished with something, “would she come and visit? Miss Hosmer. After she is married.”
“I expect so,” Harper said.
“Would Lady Wilmington come?”
“Possibly.”
“Would they bring the dogs?”
“Look, Joseph. You are asking me a lot of questions.” Harper looked at him. “I don’t know.”
“Biscuit would probably be too old for the journey in a few years,” Joseph said, “He sleeps a great deal already. Long journeys are not good for old dogs, you know.”
It warmed his heart to see how thoughtful his little one had become, and he wondered if Temperance was the reason he was able to express himself like this now.
“We are getting you a dog at Sedgewick,” Harper said. “You will have your own.”
Joseph considered this.
“I still want to see Biscuit,” he said. “My own dog is a separate matter.”
“You can see Biscuit,” Harper said.
“And Miss Hosmer.”
Harper said nothing.
“And Lady Wilmington,” Joseph said.
“Joseph.”
