Valerie set a hand on my shoulder.

“But you didn’t.”

I thought about the man who had lain beneath a white sheet listening to strangers decide what would happen to his body.

He had been terrified of moving, terrified of breathing too loudly, terrified that the next door opening would be the last thing he ever heard.

I could not change that morning.

I could only refuse to let it become the whole story.

Inside the house, Connie called that she’d made too much dinner, which usually meant she had made exactly enough for all of us.