“I want to,” I said, tucking the blanket around her knees.
“You’re stubborn, like me.”
“I learned from the best.”
She laughed, and it turned into a cough. I held her hand until it passed.
***
Some nights, Eleanor couldn’t sleep, and we sat in the kitchen with the lamp low. She told me about her wedding day, about a boy she almost married before Dean’s father, and about the time she lost a baby no one in the family ever talked about.
“I learned from the best.”
“You’re the only one I tell these things to,” my MIL said once.
“Why me?” I asked curiously.
“Because you stay.”
***
Dean stopped staying long before I noticed.
The late nights at the office stretched longer. Dinner plates went cold on the counter. Our anniversary passed without a card, and when I mentioned it the following morning, he looked at me as if I’d spoken a language he didn’t recognize.
Dean stopped staying.
“I’ve been swamped, Claire. You know that,” my husband said.
“I know,” I replied, feeling disgruntled.
“Don’t make this into something.”
“I’m not.”
But I was. Quietly, inside my own chest, I was making it into something I didn’t want to look at. I told myself he was grieving in advance and that watching his mother fade was breaking him in a way he couldn’t say out loud.
I made excuses the way I once made grocery lists. Easily and daily.
