When Adanna died, the worst comforters had been the ones who tried to fix it — who rushed to fill his silence with reasons it was for the best, or assurances that she was in a better place, or the terrible bright suggestion that he was young and would love again.

They had meant well, every one of them, and each attempt to repair his grief had landed like a small insult to it, as though his loss were a problem to be solved rather than a fact to be honored.

The people who had actually helped were the rare few who simply sat with him and let the grief be what it was.

His mother, who had lost her own husband young, had come and stayed a week and barely said a word — had just been there, present, unfrightened by his pain, letting him feel the whole unbearable weight of it without once trying to lighten it.

That was the gift, he had learned: not the removal of the pain, which no one can do, but the willingness to stay in the room with it.

So when Ifeoma told him about the child she would never carry, he did not tell her they could adopt, though they might; did not tell her Winnie loved her, though she did; did not reach for any of the true and useless things that would have made the moment easier for him and emptier for her.