I thought about him standing at the hospital window after she was gone, holding a daughter he hadn’t known how to protect.
I thought about him making apple pancakes on a Saturday morning for a four-year-old who didn’t know any of this yet.
I thought about thirty years of questions he had carried alone.
“He should have told me sooner,” I said.
“Yes,” Miriam agreed.
“He should have.”
“I would have helped him.”
“I know.” She set her cup down.
“He knew that too.
I think that’s what frightened him.
He didn’t want you carrying it.
He wanted to protect you from the weight of it for as long as he could.”
“He couldn’t carry it alone forever.”
The funeral was on a Thursday, ten days after Frank passed.
Miriam stood beside me at the graveside.
She had Frank’s eyes and his way of going still when something mattered, and standing next to her felt like standing next to a part of him I hadn’t known existed until a week ago.
My daughter, Nora, held my hand through the service.
She was twenty-six, old enough to understand most of what I had told her, young enough that some of it had genuinely frightened her.
She had cried when I told her about Catherine.
She had gone very quiet when I told her about Gerald.
After the service, she found me by the car.
“Mom.” She looked at me carefully.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly.
She nodded like that was the right answer.
We drove to Miriam’s house afterward — a small gathering, just family, which now meant something different than it had two weeks ago.
Miriam had made food.
Someone had brought flowers.
Nora sat with Miriam at the kitchen table and asked her questions about Frank when he was young, and Miriam answered each one with the particular care of someone who has been waiting a long time to be asked.
I stood in the doorway and watched them.
Nora laughed at something Miriam said — a real laugh, surprised out of her — and Miriam smiled with Frank’s eyes, and something in my chest loosened in a way I hadn’t expected.
Later, after everyone had gone, I found Miriam’s recipe box on the counter.
I went through it slowly, not looking for anything in particular.
