It would have been so easy for her — natural, even — to be bitter.

Here she was, four years a widow, four years of a table with one chair, and here was her friend across the coffee complaining about the very thing Bev had lost and would give anything to have back: a living husband, a shared house, a marriage to be unhappy in.

A smaller person would have felt the unfairness of it and let some of that bitterness leak out, would have said something to make me feel small for wanting more than what she’d give the world to have at all.

Bev did the opposite.