“Only the ones I like.”
We sat for almost three hours.
We talked about our children, our work, our lost parents, and the strange things that happen when you grow older. We laughed about our teenage foolishness and remembered friends whose names we had not spoken in decades.
But every so often, the conversation would grow quiet.
I would look at her hands resting around her coffee cup, and she would look at the window as though she were remembering something she could not quite bring herself to say.
Finally, I asked the question I had carried for forty years.
“Anna, were you happy?”
She did not answer immediately.
She stirred her coffee, although there was no sugar left to dissolve.
“I had a complicated life,” she said at last.
It was not an answer, and we both knew it.
I wanted to ask more, but something in her expression stopped me.
