It was not a comfortable meal exactly. It was not easy the way easy things are. But it was real. 2 people sitting at a table, learning how to be in the same room in a new way, without the roles they had been using to manage the distance between them.
After a while, Rebecca said, “You burned the toast.”
“I know,” he said.
“The eggs are overdone.”
“I’m aware.”
“My mother would have been horrified.”
It came out before she could decide whether to say it.
The word mother dropped naturally into the conversation, and with it came the first small, unexpected flicker of something lighter. Not quite a smile, but close.
He looked at her.
“She had very high standards,” he said quietly, with the particular care of a man speaking about someone he had known only briefly but thought about for a long time.
Rebecca looked at her plate. “Yes,” she said. “She did.”
Then there was silence, but a different kind. Not heavy. Not waiting for something. Just the ordinary quiet of 2 people eating breakfast together for the first time.
3 days later, Grace came to visit.