I never did.

Your mother did it for us, and now she’s gone, and I’ve been so afraid that without her you and I are just two strangers who share a name.” My daughter looked at me across her dead mother’s cutting table, and her chin did the thing, the family thing, and she said, “I’ve been afraid of that too, Dad.

For four months.

I thought you didn’t call because you didn’t know what was left, either.” We stood there a while with that between us.