I laughed once.
It came out wet and tired.
“I wanted to scream.”
“Grace is not the absence of wanting to scream,” she said. “Sometimes it is just choosing not to do it in a hospital hallway.”
That became one of those sentences I carried with me.
Like Mr. Gideon’s bucket with no bottom.
Like my own sentence in the car.
You did what you knew I would survive.
My mother went home that evening.
She was advised to follow up with her doctor, rest, and eat actual meals instead of coffee and crackers.
I drove her to her apartment.
We were quiet most of the way.
When we pulled up, she unbuckled her seatbelt but did not get out.
“I found something,” she said.
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
She opened her purse and pulled out an envelope.
It was old.
Soft at the edges.
My name was written on the front in my father’s handwriting.
