Linda stopped unwrapping a glass.
“You never told me that.”
“I was embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Because I had spent three years telling everyone how wonderful it was living with family.”
“It can have been wonderful and still become something else.”
I sat down.
That sentence settled somewhere deep inside me.
For months I had been rewriting my own memories.
If Rebecca was ungrateful now, perhaps she had always been ungrateful.
If Daniel ignored me now, perhaps he had never loved me properly.
But that wasn’t true.
When Arthur died, Daniel had flown to Chicago the same night.
He slept in a chair beside my bed because I had been afraid of waking alone.
He handled funeral arrangements when I could barely remember my own telephone number.
Rebecca had packed my kitchen when I moved.
The grandchildren had taped a sign above my new Arizona bedroom.
WELCOME HOME GRANDMA.
Those things had happened too.
Maybe the most painful truth was that love could be genuine and still become careless.
That night, after Linda left, I sat alone on the balcony.
The city below glowed in warm pools of light.
Music drifted faintly from a restaurant.
Someone laughed in the courtyard.
I expected loneliness.
