“I can do it myself!”

So I only steadied the base of the stool so it would not slip, and let him do it.

“You did a fantastic job, sweetie.”

“Did I do it completely right?”

“You did it right,” I said.

Back at the table, I opened my phone out of habit, and saw Brandon’s old chat thread sitting at the bottom of the archive.

His last message still read: We can still fix our marriage, for Toby’s sake. Almost idly, I typed a reply into the box: By the way, there were six dollars left over from your mother’s birthday party, and I never gave them back to you. I looked at the words for a few seconds.