“Why?”
“Because he didn’t want you to think he was doing all this to earn praise. He wanted you to have what you needed without feeling you owed him something.”
I looked out the window again.
“Everybody judged him for what happened fifteen years ago.”
My mother sighed.
“People find it easier to remember a person’s worst mistake than to pay attention to what they do afterward.”
She reached for my hand.
“Your uncle isn’t a perfect man. He knows that. But he has spent years trying to make his life useful. You should never ignore that.”
I sat beside her, thinking about all the things I had failed to notice.
For years, I had seen Ray’s silence as distance.
I had mistaken his modest life for a lack of ambition.
I had assumed the garden was simply a hobby that gave him something to do.
I had been looking at the same man as everyone else, but I had been seeing only what was easiest to see.
