“I don’t know.”
Hannah crouched.
She placed the photograph beside the stone.
Then touched Rosie’s name.
“Hi.”
My heart stopped.
“I’m Hannah.”
Daniel turned away.
I covered my mouth.
“This is weird because apparently you already knew me.”
She laughed once.
Then cried.
“I wish somebody had told me about you.”
She sat in the grass.
So we sat too.
For the first time in eighteen years, the three of us talked about Rosie together.
Not around her.
About her.
There wasn’t much to tell.
That was painful too.
Rosie lived nine days.
She hated baths.
Or perhaps she was simply a newborn who screamed during them.
She had a slightly darker patch of hair above her left ear.
She sneezed in groups of three.
She was eleven minutes younger.
Six pounds, one ounce.
She existed.
Sometimes that’s the entire inheritance grief leaves you.
Proof that somebody was here.
Hannah didn’t forgive us immediately.
I’m glad she didn’t.
Instant forgiveness would have made the story prettier and the truth cheaper.
We went to family therapy.
Daniel and I went separately too.
I learned that grief I’d considered “managed” had simply been organized into rituals nobody was allowed to see.
The laundry room.
