“He’d hate that.

You know he would.

It’s time you let yourself live again.

For both of you.”

I stayed the afternoon.

She showed me pictures I’d never seen, Gabriel at eight, Gabriel at the academy, and we laughed more than I’d have thought possible in that living room, and something that had been clenched shut in me for a very long time began, carefully, to open.

Before I left, she walked me out to the porch and stood with me a moment in the Texas dusk.