Mark’s letter lay open on her lap.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Nothing. Everything.”
I sat beside her.
“Talk to me.”
She stared at the page.
“I used to think moving forward meant leaving something behind. That if I loved someone again, I would somehow be betraying Mark.”
I took her hand.
“And now?”
“Now I think he would have been furious if I’d spent the rest of my life refusing to live.”
She laughed through her tears.
“He would have called it a terrible use of a perfectly good life.”
I smiled.
“Sounds like him.”
Diane leaned against my shoulder.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then she whispered, “I don’t want to waste what we have, Ethan.”
“Neither do I.”
“I’m not promising you forever.”
“Good. I don’t need you to predict the future.”
She turned toward me.
“What do you need?”
I thought about it.
