I looked at Helen’s chair.
“To Helen.”
Everyone lifted a glass.
“To Helen.”
Later that night, after everyone left, Brian stayed to help with dishes.
He washed.
I dried.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I know I don’t deserve it yet, but someday… could you tell me stories about Mom again?”
I put a plate into the cabinet.
“You don’t have to deserve stories,” I said. “You only have to listen.”
So we sat at the kitchen table.
The same table where he had humiliated me.
The same table where I had almost lost myself.
And I told him about the first time I saw his mother.
How she had stood in a grocery store aisle arguing with a manager because peaches were priced wrong. How I thought she was the most terrifying woman alive. How I married her three years later because I learned that terrifying and honest were sometimes the same thing.
