He Finished Reading It For Her

We went out to the street to say goodbye to Grammy properly, standing in the cold in whatever we'd slept in, and there was a hug for each of us before she got in and pulled away. We stood there and watched the van go until it turned off the street, which took longer than any of us expected it to, and then went back inside to a house that already felt different with one van gone from in front of it. She had wished Sal a happy birthday first, before any of that, standing in the hallway with her keys already in her hand.

Pancakes went on not long after, in a kitchen that belonged to somebody else, with one chair at the table that would have been filled an hour earlier and now wasn't.

The day had nothing planned in it, on purpose, and Sal spent the morning easing into that the way you ease into something you're not quite used to after two and a half years of a Masters attaching a deadline to every birthday she'd had. Sophie dealt out the card game she'd learned on her trial and explained it badly, and it took three wrong hands before we had the rules straight, with Jess watching from the couch and laughing at how long it was taking us.

Jan left after lunch for the snow, her bag already in the car, the season and the fields both close enough to be worth the drive.

It was after that the four of us sat down on the couch — Sal, Anth, Sophie and Jess — to go through the cards. There were four to read: from Sophie and Jess, both in the room to hear their own words read back to them, and from Mack and from Shea, further away and only present in what they'd written. Sal read them out one at a time. Sophie's card and then Jess's, and the room went the way rooms go when someone reads aloud something meant only for them — quiet, then not quite steady. By Mack's card the girls had stopped pretending otherwise. Sal got partway into Shea's before her voice gave out on her, and Anth took the card from her hands and finished it, reading Shea's words in his own voice because somebody had to and she couldn't.

Ice cream came after that, the older tradition of the two, Jess driving us there and everybody a little emptied out and lighter for it. Pizza for dinner, eaten out of the box because nobody had the energy to pretend otherwise.

Sal said it had been a great day, and by then everyone in the room understood exactly what she meant by it.Read more