“She’s good for you,” she said.
“I think so.”
“No, Ethan. I mean you look like yourself again.”
I didn’t know what to say.
My mother squeezed my arm.
“Your father would have liked her.”
That evening, I told Diane what my mother had said.
Diane looked down at her hands.
“I wish I’d met him.”
“Me too.”
We sat together in the reading room until the fire burned low.
Mark’s books stood on the bottom shelf of the walnut bookcase.
My work held them.
For some reason, that felt right.
Almost a year after the night I first met Diane, I saw Tasha again.
I was sitting with Diane at Slow Morning, sharing a slice of olive oil cake near the front window.
Outside, people hurried along the sidewalk beneath a gray autumn sky.
Then I saw Tasha.
She stood across the street, holding a paper shopping bag.
She looked at me through the glass.
