“Then Stan it is,” she said with a smile. “I hope you’re patient. I move slower these days.”
From that moment on, my assumptions disappeared.
For several weeks, my responsibilities were simple.
I drove her to medical appointments, charity events, lunches with old friends, and every Friday to the cemetery where her husband Arthur was buried. Marriage
She never cried at his grave.
Instead, she spoke softly to him, as though he were sitting beside her.
Over time, she began asking questions.
“How old are your children, Stan?”
“Seven, five, and two.”
“Do they know how hard you work?”
I laughed.
“They mostly know I’m never home.”
A shadow crossed her face.
“It’ll be worth it one day,” she said quietly.
Sometimes after our errands, she invited me inside for coffee.
I always perched nervously on the edge of expensive chairs.
“You can sit back,” she teased one afternoon. “The furniture won’t attack you.”
“Old habits.”
She chuckled.
Soon she told me stories about Arthur, about the loneliness of a giant house, and about her four adult children.
The way she talked about them always felt different.
One afternoon, stirring tea absentmindedly, she sighed.
“Bradley wants another “That sounds important.”
“It sounds like vultures circling,” she muttered.
Then she added quickly, “But you didn’t hear me say that.”
I pretended I hadn’t.
But I had.
