I could have said a great many things to him.

I had six months of things I could have said, about his mother’s tears at every goodbye, about the way she worried whether a stranger was eating enough while her own son could not be bothered to call.

I said none of it.

There would have been no point.

You cannot explain love to a man who has decided it is a line item.

I had learned that much, at least, in my months of watching the space Arthur had left in his mother’s life.