Mabel built a crooked sandcastle and laughed like a child. June walked into the ocean on the second day and by the third was swimming badly but joyfully, shouting, “I am not afraid of anything anymore.” Marion sang on the porch after dinner while strangers stopped on the boardwalk to listen. Elaine collected shells and lined them on the kitchen windowsill like a small altar to wonder.
Every night after supper, we lit a candle beside Henry’s photograph.
Each woman said one thing she wished someone had told her when she was younger.
Mabel said, “You are allowed to stop giving.”
Vivian said, “The right person won’t make you feel small.”
Elaine said, “You don’t have to be strong all the time.”
Marion said, “Silence is not peace. It is just silence.”
June said, “Grief doesn’t mean your life is over. It means your love was real.”
When it was my turn, I looked at Henry’s smiling face in that picture and said, “You were never a burden. You were the reason.”
Nobody tried to improve on that.
When I came home three weeks later, Natalie’s email was waiting.
Subject: Can we talk?
I was in the kitchen making peach jam from Henry’s recipe, the one that required more patience than sugar.
I opened the email.