I Spent Three Years Respecting a Grieving Widow’s Boundaries, Telling Myself It Was the Kind Thing to Do — Until a Six-Year-Old Showed Up on My Steps and I Realized Those Boundaries Had Been Hiding Something

“Can we practice throwing before my game?” he asked.

“You said we could.”

Chapter 16 — I Kept Them, Thomas

“Yeah, buddy,” I said, ruffling his hair.

“Let’s go to the park.”

I buckled Daisy into her seat and waited while Mason climbed in with his glove, and before I started the engine I glanced up through the windshield at a wide clean blue sky, the way I do sometimes, and I said it to my brother the way I always do now, silently, just between us. I’ve got them, Thomas.

They’re okay.