“Yes,” I said.
The woman near him laughed again, lower this time, as if someone had leaned close and whispered into her ear.
Christopher covered the phone for a moment, but not quickly enough.
When he came back, his voice had changed.
It was softer, almost patient, the voice he used when he wanted to make cruelty sound reasonable.
“I can’t keep dropping everything because you panic,” he said. “Mom has had bad nights before.”
I looked at the urn and felt something inside me settle.
Not break.
Not explode.
Settle.
For twenty years, I had mistaken endurance for loyalty.
I had believed that if I kept the house running, remembered every birthday, sat through every appointment, and softened every disappointment, our marriage would eventually become the thing I had been protecting.
Instead, I had protected Christopher from the consequences of being absent.
The night before, the emergency room had been washed in the kind of harsh fluorescent light that made every face look tired.
