“I know.”
“But someday,” I said carefully, “if you keep becoming someone safe, you may come for dinner.”
His eyes filled.
“When?”
“When Lily is ready. When Karen agrees. When Rachel stops wanting to hit you with a casserole dish.”
He laughed through tears.
“That might take a while.”
“Yes,” I said. “It should.”
A year after the dog bowl dinner, I turned seventy-one.
I did not cook.
Lily ordered from Helen’s favorite Italian restaurant. Rachel brought cake. Karen brought flowers from her garden. Samuel came with nonalcoholic cider and pretended it was champagne.
And Brian came.
He arrived alone, clean-shaven, carrying no laundry and asking for no money.
At the door, he handed me a small wrapped package.
I opened it in the living room.
Inside was a framed photograph.
Not of him.
Not of us.
Of the house.
He had taken it from the sidewalk at sunset. The porch light was glowing. The garden was blooming. In the window, faintly, you could see Lily and me at the dining room table, laughing over a puzzle.
