“Not since this morning.”
He nods, satisfied. “Good. We have enough to feed two armies.”
The backyard is full and loud, smelling of charcoal and the dry rub with cumin coming off the grill, with the authority of a recipe refined over decades.
Kids are running with the energy of kids who have a yard, an afternoon, and no particular instruction.
Milo is at the grill with the proprietary concentration of a man who takes his role asgrill masterseriously. His wife, Tess, is making sure everyone has a drink and the kids do not pull out the freshly planted bulbs.
Dina is at the table in the shade. She catches my eye when I come through the back gate and gives me a look that contains a full paragraph of questions.
You here? You with her? She good? You taking good care of her? She is smiling. Is that because you haven’t screwed up?
I nod.Yes, to all of the above.
I find a place where I can be useful, which is the first strategy.Don’t stand around waiting to be talked to; find something to carry, fill, or move.
Robert notices this without comment, which I take as its own form of approval.
Lucy settles in a chair in the shade next to Dina that Tess has arranged with the preemptive care of a woman who has been told abouttheribs, not the ones we’re eating, but the ones inside Lucy that got banged up.
She talks to her mother, who fusses over her in the loving, relentless way of a woman who has been frightened and is expressing it through proximity and food.
I watch Lucy receive it—no deflecting, no managing, no I’m fine, don’t worry, here let me get you something instead. She just lets her mother fuss.
She’s letting people take care of her.
This is new behavior.
It started after the accident.
There is a small, incremental shift in how she moves through a room—a new willingness to ask, to accept, to occupy space without apologizing.
I don’t know what produced it.
But I have watched it happen like watching the garden in early spring, the almost imperceptible daily progress of growth.
Milo comes over totalkto me at some point.
He is built like the work he does—solid, with hands that have fixed things—and he looks at me the way he looked at me at the courthouse wedding, like a car he’s not yet sure about.
“How’s she doing?” he asks.
Subtext:What are you doing for her?
“Better every day,” I say.
Subtext:Everything I can.
He nods. He looks at his sister in the chair, laughing at something her mother said.
“She’s tough.” His tone carries the pride of a sibling who has watched someone be tough and knows the cost. “She doesn’t let people see when things are hard.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He looks at me directly.
I meet his eyes and give him honesty. “I’m learning to. I should have learned sooner.”
