He stayed about twenty minutes. He fussed with his mother’s pillows. He set out her turkey sandwich and cut it into quarters the way you’d do it for a child, and she swatted him, and he did it anyway. When he left, he paused at the door and looked back at me one more time.
“Thanks for coming to see her, Gordon,” he said. “It means more than you know.”
After he was gone, June stared at the closed door.
“He’s a good boy,” she said. “Builds cabinets. Has a daughter of his own, Hazel. She’s nine. Smart as a whip and twice as stubborn.”
“Sounds like her grandmother.”
June laughed, but it came out thin.
“Gordie,” she said, “do you ever think about what might have happened? If we hadn’t gone off to separate schools? If I’d stayed? If you’d stayed?”
I thought about it more than I’d ever admitted to anyone. More than I’d admitted to Carol.
