“Her aunt could take her.”
“He’ll want to start over.”
I spent the night after the funeral sitting beneath the kitchen table with my knees pulled against my chest.
Frank found me there shortly before sunrise.
He lowered himself onto the floor without asking why I was hiding.
“He’ll want to start over.”
“Are you leaving?” I whispered.
He looked as though I had struck him.
“No.”
“Everybody leaves.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
Frank reached beneath the table and held out his little finger.
“I promise.”
He kept it.
“Are you leaving?”
Years later, he walked me down the aisle.
At my daughter’s christening, he stood beside me with one hand beneath her head, afraid I might drop her even though I was 32.
Whenever I asked about his life before my mother, he gave the same answer.
“The important part started when you came along, sweetheart.”
I always heard devotion in those words.
I never heard what he was leaving out.
Years later, he walked me down the aisle.
Frank’s health began failing shortly after his 78th birthday.
First came the exhaustion.
Then the weight loss.
Then the tests, the specialists, and the careful sentences doctors use when they already know the ending.
During his final week, I slept in a vinyl chair beside his bed.
Frank’s health began failing shortly after his 78th birthday.
I woke whenever his breathing changed.
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