I could hear her swallowing hard.

“Arthur, I’ve spent three years thinking he died of bad luck.

Now every happy picture feels like a warning I failed to notice.”

“Please don’t let them steal the good things too,” I said.

“Whatever happened, he was happy in some of those pictures because he was a person capable of hope.

That belongs to him, not to her.”

Isabel was quiet for so long I thought the call had ended.

“That’s the first kind thing anybody’s said about this,” she replied.