We talked for forty minutes.

Most of it didn’t connect to anything.

She told me about a dog named Buster twice.

She asked about “the baby,” and I could not determine whether she meant Sandra in 1968 or my daughter, and it didn’t matter, and I said the baby was doing beautifully, which was true in either direction.

Once, out of nowhere, she gripped my hand hard and said, “You didn’t have to go so far.”

I didn’t ask what she meant.