Just changed.
“He didn’t replace her.”
“I know that now.”
“No. You know it because he’s dead and can’t disappoint you anymore.”
She cried harder.
I hated that I understood her.
Grief makes people selfish in strange ways.
So does loyalty.
For Brad and Stephanie, accepting me had probably felt like betraying their mother.
For Frank, confronting them meant risking distance from his children.
So everyone chose the easiest target.
Me.
We did not become a happy family that afternoon.
There was no group hug.
Brad and Stephanie left together.
I went home alone.
Frank’s slippers were still beside the bed.
His reading glasses were still on the nightstand.
I sat on the floor and cried until it got dark.
Not because of the house.
Because I had learned something enormous about the man I loved after he was no longer there to answer for it.
That is a particular kind of grief.
You can forgive the dead.
You can also be furious with them.
They don’t make either process easy.
Three months later, Brad called.
Not Stephanie.
Brad.
He asked if I wanted to have lunch.
I almost said no.
Then I went.
He brought a box of photographs.
Some included my mother.
In one, she was holding baby Stephanie.
I stared at it for a long time.
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“You were little.”
“Why did Mom never tell me?”
Brad shrugged.
“Maybe everyone thought there would be more time.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Stephanie came to the next lunch.
She apologized again.
Better this time.
Specific.
She apologized for calling me a gold digger.
For making jokes at Thanksgiving.
For telling relatives I was waiting for Frank to die.
That one was new.
It hurt.
But I appreciated hearing it from her rather than from someone else.
The house is still ours.
All three of ours.
