Diane set the photograph down.
“Grief rearranges your life,” she said. “People keep asking when you’ll put everything back where it belongs. But you don’t. You learn to live in the new arrangement.”
I looked at her.
She was forty-six. I learned that later that morning, when she asked my age and I answered.
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Thirty-two. Old enough to know better, young enough to keep learning.”
“Is that supposed to be an insult?”
“It’s supposed to be breakfast.”
I laughed again.
When I finally stood to leave, she handed me a small paper bag with two slices of bread and an apple.
“For the road.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
That answer stayed with me long after I left.
She knew she didn’t have to do anything for me.
She did it anyway.
And for reasons I couldn’t yet explain, that felt more intimate than any grand romantic gesture I’d experienced in four years.
