Chapter 11: Summer Distance
Summer thickened the air over the backyard and thinned the last of the emergency feeling that had clung to the new keys.
Lily and Owen came for a week in July while Claire and Brandon attended a wedding out of state—Brandon’s cousin, Donna fully in her element. Claire had asked with careful neutrality; I had said yes because the children were not collateral. We swam at the municipal pool. We grilled cheese. We did not video-call the other household unless the children asked, and when they did I kept the phone angled away from any visible proof of “winning.” There was nothing to win. There was only a week of bedtime stories in a house where no one reassigned the furniture mid-sentence.
Claire called once, from a hotel corridor, voice low. Brandon was “in a mood” about my having the children during a Whitaker event. Donna had commented that grandchildren belonged at family weddings, not with “difficult” relatives. I told Claire to enjoy the parts she could and to stop narrating Donna’s commentary into my ear. She laughed weakly and hung up. The children asked for popsicles. I provided popsicles. The afternoon remained ours.
Ruth checked in by email: no new legal noise, deed unchallenged, porch-camera clip from January still archived and unused. I replied with thanks and paid her small retainer for the quiet. Paying for quiet felt different from paying for prime rib and wine to buy a peace that had never arrived.
On the last evening of the children’s week, Owen said, “I like that you sit at the end.”
May you like
“So do I,” I said.
He nodded, as if confirming a rule of physics, and went to find his shoes.
