She set down the sponge.

“We don’t have to do it today.”

That sentence became one of the few things I could carry from one hour to another.

We don’t have to do it today.

It did not mean nothing needed doing.

There were funeral arrangements, calls from the school, forms I could not leave forever on the table.

It meant that grief did not have to obey the timetable of a dirty mug.

Arthur came that afternoon carrying a taped cardboard box.