Chapter 19 — Look at the Dates

Aunt Linda came, and my cousin Mark, who is the kind of man who carries a small notebook and is not embarrassed by it, and we sat around the table with the pages between us, and Linda asked, the way she asks everything, are we meeting to decide who is right.

No, I said.

Then what are we doing.

Looking at the dates.

That became the whole of what I asked anyone to do, in the hard days that followed, and it is the only instruction I am proud of giving.