“How’s the recovery?” I asked.
“Good.
Back at work full-time now.
Daniel started a new term and he’s obsessed with dinosaurs, so that’s the current situation.”
“Josephine is obsessed with the ceiling fan.”
Diane laughed.
“They’re very similar at that age.”
“I was thinking,” I said.
“In the spring, when things are a bit easier — would you want to bring Daniel over?
Just for an afternoon.
Nothing formal.
He could meet Josephine.
They could ignore each other the way babies and five-year-olds do.”
A pause.
“Yes,” Diane said.
“I think I’d like that.”
“Me too.”
After I hung up, I sat for a while in the quiet of the living room.
Josephine was asleep in her chair.
The winter light was coming through the window at a low angle, the way it does in January, making everything look a little softer than it is.
On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Mark — one I had taken on the porch the summer before he got sick, squinting into the sun the same way Daniel had squinted in his photograph.
