“Soon this will all be ours,” the woman whispered. “Just a little more patience.”
A pause. A low laugh.
Then footsteps. A door clicking shut.
Dorothy stared at the monitor until the green light blurred.
The next morning, a sympathy card sat on the kitchen counter beside the coffee maker. White lilies on the front. Inside, in elegant slanted handwriting:
To my love. The hardest part is over. Now we begin.
V.
Dorothy read it twice, set it back down exactly where she had found it, and poured her coffee.
Grant came in five minutes later wearing pressed slacks and the expression of a man managing a difficult but noble season in life.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“So are you,” Dorothy replied.
He smiled thinly and reached for a mug.
Dorothy took her coffee to the window over the sink and looked out at the wet lawn where Colleen had once planned to plant peonies.
The grief remained. It would remain. She understood that.
But now it had company.
By the fourth day after the funeral, Dorothy was no longer only a mourning mother.
She was a woman paying attention.