I Paid My Father $250 in Rent Every Month for Five Years. After His Funeral, His Best Friend Gave Me a Key and a Box.

It was a way of putting down an argument I no longer needed to rehearse every morning.

Rebecca visited the next Sunday and helped me make apple pancakes, using Mom’s handwritten recipe.

We burned the first batch.

I laughed, then nearly cried because laughter in that kitchen had once seemed impossible after she died.

“You can remember them without living exactly as they did,” Rebecca told me.

I looked at the refinished table and the new photograph.