“My husband, Mark,” she said.
“He’s handsome.”
“He knew it, too.”
She said it with such easy affection that I smiled.
Then she turned the photograph slightly toward the light.
“Mark was an architect. He died three years ago. Heart attack. He was working in the garden when it happened.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
She didn’t look away from the photograph.
“For a long time, I thought the worst part of losing him was that he wouldn’t be there for the things we’d planned. The renovations. The trips. The ridiculous argument we were supposed to finish having about the kitchen tiles.”
She laughed quietly.
“Eventually, I realized the worst part was that ordinary things kept happening, and I couldn’t tell him about them.”
I understood that more than I expected.
My father had been dead for thirteen years, and sometimes I still reached for my phone to call him when something went wrong at the shop.
