“And was she happy?” I asked.
Todd stared at the table.
“No. Not really.”
“Did anybody ask her?”
“No.”
The kitchen became quiet.
Michelle sat down beside him.
“I think I was trying to solve my own fear,” she said.
I waited.
“When Dad died, you stopped coming over as much. You stopped calling people. You stayed in that farmhouse alone, and every time I visited, I worried about you. I imagined you falling in the bathroom or getting sick when nobody was there. I kept thinking that if you moved in with us, I could finally stop worrying.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Because I didn’t know how to say it.”
She wiped her cheeks.
“And because I thought if I made it sound practical, you would agree.”
There it was.
Not cruelty. Not hatred.
Fear, dressed up as a spreadsheet.
“I was afraid, too,” I told her. “But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life making decisions just to keep other people from worrying about me.”
