Later I stopped pretending the reason was my father.

I did not bring flowers or make speeches.

I hauled heavy boxes of laundry when her back was tired.

I fixed a door hinge that had been squealing for a month.

Sometimes I just sat on the bench outside with a paper cup of coffee until she had a free minute, and sometimes she never got a free minute, and I drank the coffee and went home, and came back the next Tuesday.

For months she kept a firm, quiet distance between us, and I learned, slowly, that respecting it was not a strategy to close it.