It was never meant to be impressive.
It was meant to be ours.
Patricia used to say the place had good silence. Not lonely silence. The other kind. The kind where the water moves softly against the shore and the old refrigerator hums in the kitchen and you can hear someone you love turning a page in the next room.
After she died, that silence changed.
Patricia passed from cancer eleven years ago. She was fifty-one. Some days, I still can’t believe a person can be in a house so completely and then be gone from it so thoroughly. For months after her funeral, I would catch myself buying the tea she liked or turning to say something to her when a cardinal landed on the porch rail.
Marcus was twenty-two then, just finishing college in Albany. He was grieving, though I didn’t understand the shape of his grief at the time. Mine looked like work. His looked like distance. Neither of us knew how to reach across it.
I did what men in my family had always done when pain walked into the room.
I got busy.
I worked longer hours. I took on bigger jobs. I answered emails at midnight. I paid bills early. I made sure Marcus had what he needed. Tuition. Rent help. A reliable used car. Money for interviews. Money for the things young men need when they’re trying to become adults while pretending they’re fine.
I gave him checks when I should have given him conversations.
I can admit that now.
