She reached across the table and placed her hand over mine.
It was a small, awkward gesture, but it was the first real connection we had shared since Daniel’s funeral.
“I’m so sorry, Margaret,” she said softly.
We sat in the kitchen for a long time, the takeout food growing cold on the counter, just talking about Daniel.
We laughed about how bad he was at spelling when he was a kid, and how he always tried to cheat on the difficult clues by looking up the answers in the back of the book.
It was the first time we had spoken his name without tension in the room.
That evening, after Susan and Chloe left, I walked over to the kitchen cabinet.
I pulled out the two Sunday newspapers I had bought that morning.
I took one of them and placed it gently in the recycling bin.
Then, I took the other copy, sat down at the table, and picked up my black ballpoint pen.
I looked at the clock on the wall.
It was way past two o’clock, but that didn’t matter anymore.
I turned to the crossword puzzle page, took a deep breath, and read the first clue.
“Four-letter word for warmth.”
I smiled through my tears, pressed the pen to the paper, and wrote: H-E-A-R-T.
For the first time in five years, the silence in the house didn’t feel heavy.
It just felt like Sunday.
