of cancer twelve months earlier.
Our daughter Lily had just turned four.
She still talked about him like he was away on a long trip. Sometimes she asked when he’d be coming home. Other nights she wanted to know if Daddy could see her from wherever he was.
I’d stopped trying to give perfect answers. There weren’t any.
Gerald had been Nathaniel’s closest friend for more than twenty years. They’d grown up together, taken road trips together, fished together, made jokes nobody else fully understood.
By coincidence — or maybe not — Gerald was also my boss, at a company in Ashgrove.
When Nathaniel died, Gerald became the person who kept quietly appearing before I even realized I needed help.
A bag of groceries on the porch. A broken appliance mysteriously replaced. A loose cabinet hinge fixed while I put Lily to bed.
If I was too exhausted to function, he’d sit
