and the meeting he had moved for the funeral had already caused problems.
Margaret listened to him and wondered when her son had learned to speak of grief as if it were weather delaying a schedule.
Ashley arrived an hour later with sunglasses still pushed into her hair.
She hugged her mother carefully, one hand light on Margaret’s shoulder, the other keeping her black blouse from wrinkling.
“Oh, Mom,” she said.
It was the kind of sentence that sounded tender until Margaret noticed there was nothing after it.
For thirty-two
