ask her to take responsibility for the silence simply because she had finally broken it.
“I was at Dad’s last Saturday,” I said.
She waited.
“We found their camping gear in the garage. The tent still had the tags tied to the bag.”
Elise turned toward me fully.
My parents had talked for years about taking a long trip after my mother retired. There had always been a practical obstacle: work, the house, a repair, a year that did not seem quite right. Then she became ill. The untouched equipment
