PART 6 — WHAT MY FATHER LEFT UNFINISHED
The first time Gabriel called me his sister in front of someone else, he did it without noticing.
We were at the workshop on a gray Thursday afternoon.
I had brought lunch because he had forgotten to answer two messages and, when I finally called, admitted he had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast.
Martin was arguing with him about a cupboard.
“It isn’t square,” Martin said.
“The floor isn’t level,” Gabriel replied.
“The cupboard should still be square.”
“It is square.”
“Then why does it look like that?”
“Because you’re leaning against it.”
I stood in the doorway holding a bag of sandwiches.
A man I did not recognize looked up from the far workbench.
“Delivery?”
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder.
“My sister.”
Then he turned back to Martin.
The stranger nodded.
I put the sandwiches on the table beside the kettle.
Nobody stopped.
Nobody looked at me to see whether I would correct him.
The word belonged in the room as naturally as the tools hanging on the wall.
For a moment, I had to busy myself with the paper bags.
Gabriel came over a minute later.
“What did you bring?”
“Lunch.”
“I can see that.”
“Then stop asking difficult questions.”
He smiled and reached for a sandwich.
That was when Martin noticed the envelope beneath my hand.
“Is that yours?”
I looked down.
It had been pushed through the letterbox that morning.
No stamp.
No return address.
Just my father’s surname, written in uncertain blue ink.
“I think so.”
“Looks old,” Martin said.
“The envelope isn’t.”
Gabriel stopped chewing.
“Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you opened it?”
“Not yet.”
He looked at me.
I looked back.
For years, sealed envelopes had carried the sort of truth that divided a life into before and after.
I had begun to resent the sight of them.
“Could be a bill,” I said.
Gabriel glanced at the writing.
“Somebody’s very determined to send your father a bill.”
Martin pulled out a chair.
“Well,” he said, “you won’t find out by feeding it sandwiches.”
I slid a finger beneath the flap.
Inside was a photograph.
A little girl sat on a wooden horse.
One wheel was missing.
The horse’s head had been painted white, with a red bridle and a yellow mane.
Beneath the photograph was a note.
I saw your father’s picture in the newspaper.
He promised my granddaughter he would finish this.
I know it has been a long time.
I thought you should know he kept the parts.
At the bottom was a name.
Walter Finch.
And an address on the far side of town.
I turned the photograph over.
On the back, in handwriting I knew immediately, my father had written four words.
For Lucy, when ready.
The House With the Blue Gate
Walter Finch lived in a narrow house behind a blue gate that would not open fully.
A rose branch had grown through the bars.
Gabriel tried to free it.
“Leave it,” I said.
“You’ll tear your hand.”
“It’s caught.”
“So are we.”
He looked at me over his shoulder.
I pointed to the small gap.
“We can fit.”
He stepped sideways through it.
I followed.
Walter answered the door before we knocked.
He was very old.
Not frail in the delicate way people described when they wanted age to sound graceful.
He looked tired.
His cardigan hung unevenly.
One slipper had been repaired with black tape.
“You came.”
He said it with such surprise that I wondered how long he had expected to wait.
“I’m his daughter.”
“I know.”
He looked past me.
“And you?”
“Gabriel.”
Walter frowned.
Then something moved across his face.
Recognition.
“You’re the boy.”
Gabriel stood still.
“The one he brought to the workshop?”
“Yes.”
Walter gripped the door.
“Well.”
He shook his head.
“Well, look at that.”
Inside, the house smelled of furniture polish and old books.
A clock ticked loudly in the hallway.
We followed him into a sitting room where every surface held something carefully kept.
Photographs.
A glass bird.
A vase without flowers.
A stack of envelopes tied with string.
Walter lowered himself into an armchair.
“You’ll have to forgive the state of the place.”
The room was spotless.
I sat on the sofa.
Gabriel remained standing until Walter pointed to the other chair.
“You don’t have to inspect the ceiling.”
Gabriel sat.
Walter studied him.
“I remember you.”
“I don’t think I remember you.”
“No reason you should.”
“I used to collect offcuts from your father’s workshop.”
He nodded toward me.
“For the stove.”
“Before the council made me change it.”
I looked around.
“Did you know him well?”
“Enough.”
Walter’s eyes moved toward the photograph in my hand.
“He made that horse.”
“For your granddaughter?”
“Started it.”
“What happened?”
Walter looked at me.
Then away.
“Your father died.”
The answer was so plain that it left no room for anything else.
“I meant after that.”
“Yes.”
“I know what you meant.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“I went to the workshop when they were clearing it.”
“Asked whether anyone had seen the horse.”
“They said take whatever belonged to me.”
“Did you?”
“The body.”
“Most of the pieces.”
He nodded toward the back of the house.
“It’s in the shed.”
“Why didn’t you have someone finish it?”
Walter looked at the photograph again.
“Lucy said she wanted him to.”
I glanced at Gabriel.
Walter’s mouth tightened.
“She was six.”
“Children can wait a long time for something they don’t understand isn’t coming.”
Nobody spoke.
Then I asked, “Where is she now?”
“Married.”
“Two children.”
“Lives three hours away.”
He smiled faintly.
“She doesn’t remember saying it.”
“You do.”
“Yes.”
His eyes went to the window.
“I remember quite a lot.”
The Horse in the Shed
The shed door caught at the bottom.
Gabriel lifted it gently while Walter worked the latch.
Inside were garden tools, folded chairs, and the smell of dry wood.
The horse stood beneath a sheet near the back wall.
Walter removed the covering.
For a moment, I could not move.
Not because it was beautiful.
It was unfinished.
One side had been sanded smooth.
The other still carried pencil marks.
A wheel lay in a box beside it.
The mane was only partly painted.
My father had left a thumbprint in the white paint near the horse’s ear.
I knew it was his.
I could not have explained how.
Gabriel crouched beside the box.
He did not touch anything at first.
Walter stood behind us.
“I kept meaning to do something with it.”
“Then Lucy got older.”
“Then my wife became ill.”
“Then I thought it was too late.”
I knelt beside the horse.
Under the body, my father had written measurements in pencil.
A few were crossed out.
One had a small angry mark beside it.
I laughed unexpectedly.
Gabriel looked at me.
“He used to do that.”
“What?”
“Get annoyed with numbers.”
“He’d write them harder, as though that would make them cooperate.”
Walter chuckled.
“Yes.”
“He did.”
I ran my fingers along the unfinished wood.
For so long, everything connected to my father had been serious.
His records.
His warnings.
The meeting.
The road.
Here was something he had begun because a little girl wanted a horse with wheels.
A promise with no danger in it.
A task he had expected to finish.
“Can we take it?” Gabriel asked.
Walter looked at him.
“To the workshop.”
“I can see what it needs.”
I turned.
“Gabriel.”
He met my eyes.
“I want to.”
Walter’s face changed.
“You’d finish it?”
“If Lucy still wants it.”
“She’s got two children.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Walter looked down.
Then nodded.
“I’ll ask her.”
On our way out, he stopped beside the kitchen door.
“There’s something else.”
I felt the familiar tightening in my stomach.
He saw it.
“No.”
“Nothing terrible.”
“I should have said that first.”
He opened a drawer and took out an envelope worn almost transparent at the edges.
“Your father left this with me.”
I stared at him.
Walter shook his head quickly.
“Not a letter.”
“Nothing like that.”
He emptied it onto the table.
Buttons.
A brass hinge.
Two screws.
A little wooden wheel.
And a list written on the back of a receipt.
My father’s handwriting.
Jobs to finish.
Not names to investigate.
Not accounts to examine.
Jobs.
A kitchen shelf.
A broken chair.
A toy cart.
A window that would not close.
Small things belonging to ordinary people.
Walter touched the list.
“I think he gave it to me by mistake.”
“He was carrying too much that day.”
I picked it up.
Near the bottom was an entry that made my throat close.
Bedroom shelf for my girl.
Beside it, he had drawn a small star.
The Shelf That Was Never Built
I remembered asking for the shelf.
Not immediately.
At first, the words seemed to belong to another child.
Then the memory arrived in pieces.
My bedroom.
Books stacked beside the bed.
A blue ornament shaped like a whale.
My father standing in the doorway with a tape measure.
“How high?”
I had pointed.
“Here.”
He had measured.
Then measured again.
“You’ll need a ladder to reach that.”
“I’m going to grow.”
“Good point.”
I sat at Walter’s kitchen table with the old receipt in my hands.
The shelf had never appeared.
After the funeral, my mother moved my books into a small cupboard.
I had forgotten the request.
My father had not.
Gabriel stood beside me.
“Are you all right?”
“No.”
He waited.
Then I smiled through the tears.
“But not in a bad way.”
Walter put the kettle on.
He moved slowly.
Everything in the kitchen seemed arranged to spare him a step.
Cups beside the sink.
Tea within reach.
A chair close to the counter.
“How long have you lived alone?” I asked.
“Eleven years.”
“Does anyone come?”
“My neighbor.”
“Lucy when she can.”
“The woman from the service on Wednesdays.”
He glanced toward me.
“I’m not abandoned, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Heat rose into my face.
“I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were.”
His tone was not unkind.
“People see an old man in a quiet house and begin writing the ending.”
I looked down.
He placed three cups on the table.
“Sometimes I like the quiet.”
Then, after a pause, he added, “Sometimes I don’t.”
Gabriel pulled out a chair for him.
Walter accepted without comment.
We drank tea.
He told us my father had once installed a cupboard door upside down.
I protested.
Walter insisted.
Gabriel laughed so hard he spilled tea into the saucer.
For the first time in years, I heard a story about my father that had nothing to do with what he had lost.
I had not realized how hungry I was for one.
A List We Were Not Obliged to Finish
We took the horse to the workshop two days later.
Lucy had agreed.
She came too.
A woman in her thirties with a six-year-old daughter holding one hand and a little boy trying to pull free of the other.
Walter sat in the passenger seat of her car, wearing a tie.
“I told him he didn’t need that,” Lucy said.
“I’m visiting a business,” Walter replied.
Martin looked up from a bench.
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place.”
Within ten minutes, they were arguing amiably about varnish.
Lucy stood beside the horse.
“I barely remember it.”
“That’s all right,” I said.
“I feel terrible.”
“Why?”
“Grandad kept it all these years.”
“He wanted to.”
She touched the unfinished mane.
“I used to think your father was a giant.”
I smiled.
“He was to me.”
“He lifted this onto the bench while I was still sitting on it.”
“That sounds like him.”
Her daughter tugged her sleeve.
“Can I sit on it?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“It needs fixing.”
The child looked toward Gabriel.
“Can you fix it?”
He crouched.
“I think so.”
“How long?”
“Longer if you watch me asking that.”
She considered.
Then nodded seriously.
“I can wait over there.”
After they left, Gabriel spread my father’s list on the workbench.
Martin read it over his shoulder.
“Half these people have moved.”
“Some will have replaced whatever it was.”
“I know,” Gabriel said.
Martin looked at him.
“You don’t have to finish everything he didn’t.”
Gabriel’s hands stopped.
I had been about to say the same thing.
He looked between us.
“I know.”
“Do you?” Martin asked.
The workshop went quiet.
Gabriel looked down at the receipt.
Then he folded it carefully.
“I’d like to finish the horse.”
Martin nodded.
“That’s a job.”
“Not a debt.”
Gabriel smiled faintly.
“All right.”
I took the list.
“And I’m keeping this.”
He looked at me.
“For the shelf?”
“For the handwriting.”
He nodded.
That afternoon, he ordered the wood he needed for Lucy’s horse.
Nothing else.
The Package in My Bedroom
A week later, I came home to find a long parcel in the hallway.
Gabriel had left a note on top.
I know this is not necessary.
I wanted to.
I opened the paper.
Inside was a shelf.
Plain wood.
Smooth edges.
Two brackets.
No decoration.
No attempt to recreate something nobody could fully remember.
Beneath it lay a little wooden whale.
Blue.
I sat on the stairs.
Then I called him.
He answered immediately.
“Too much?”
I looked at the whale in my hand.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“I didn’t know whether you’d want it in your old room.”
“I don’t.”
“All right.”
“I want it in mine.”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “I can bring the drill.”
I laughed.
“Martin says you can’t make things square.”
“Martin says many things.”
He came after dinner.
We argued over the height.
I pointed.
“Here.”
“You won’t reach it.”
“I’ve stopped growing.”
“Then that seems relevant.”
He measured.
I held the bracket.
He drilled.
The house filled with dust and ordinary complaints.
When it was done, I put three books on the shelf.
The blue whale.
A photograph of my father.
Gabriel stood beside me.
“Straight enough?”
I tilted my head.
“Mostly.”
He groaned.
“I’m telling Martin you said that.”
“Please don’t.”
I smiled.
Then looked at the shelf again.
It did not close a wound.
It did not return the man who had first measured the wall.
But there were books where I wanted them.
There was a small blue whale.
And someone I loved had spent an evening helping me put them there.
I let that be enough.
The Sunday Gabriel Didn’t Come
The trouble began with an empty chair.
Not my mother’s.
Gabriel’s.
He had said he would come for lunch.
Then he called half an hour before we were due to eat.
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s a problem at the workshop.”
“What kind?”
“The delivery was wrong.”
“Martin’s here.”
“We need to sort it before Monday.”
“All right.”
“I can come later.”
“We’ll save you something.”
He did not come later.
He sent a message.
Then another.
By evening, I was angry.
Not because I had cooked.
Not really.
Because he had begun to belong so naturally that I had forgotten how quickly absence could make my body remember being left.
On Monday, I called.
He sounded distracted.
“Did you get my messages?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
There it was.
My old answer.
My mother’s old wall.
He went quiet.
Then said, “You don’t sound fine.”
“You said you’d come.”
“I know.”
“You could have called properly.”
“I did call.”
“Before lunch.”
“I was working.”
“So was everyone who used to say they were too busy.”
The words were out before I could stop them.
Gabriel said nothing.
I closed my eyes.
“That wasn’t fair.”
“No.”
His voice was careful now.
“No, it wasn’t.”
I stood in the kitchen.
The meal containers were still in the fridge.
Evidence, suddenly, of an argument that was not about food.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I should have let you know sooner that I wasn’t coming.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m allowed to miss lunch.”
I swallowed.
“Yes.”
He waited.
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
The question hurt.
Because I had asked it of him often enough.
I looked toward the chair.
Then said the truth.
“I’m still learning that someone can not come and still come back.”
His breathing changed.
A long, slow exhale.
“I’m not your mother.”
“I know.”
“And you’re not mine.”
The words settled between us.
Not cruel.
Necessary.
We had found each other through grief.
But we could not build the whole relationship out of repairing people who were gone.
“No,” I said.
“I’m your sister.”
“Yes.”
“And I behaved badly.”
“A little.”
I laughed despite myself.
“A lot?”
“Let’s stay with a little.”
We were quiet.
Then he asked, “Can I come Thursday?”
“You don’t have to make up for Sunday.”
“I know.”
“I want to come Thursday.”
I leaned against the counter.
“All right.”
“What are you making?”
“Whatever is still edible from Sunday.”
He laughed.
“I deserve that.”
The Long Way to the Cemetery
On Thursday, Gabriel arrived early.
Instead of coming inside, he asked whether I wanted to go for a drive.
“Where?”
“I don’t mind.”
I looked at him.
“You’ve got somewhere in mind.”
“A little.”
“Then say it.”
He smiled.
“The cemetery.”
I got my coat.
We took the long road.
Not because the other one was closed.
Because neither of us was in a hurry.
At my parents’ graves, the flowers from our last visit had dried.
I removed them while Gabriel filled the little watering can near the gate.
For a while, we worked without speaking.
Then he said, “Sometimes I think I’m doing well.”
I looked up.
“And then someone cancels dinner,” I said.
He smiled sadly.
“Or someone asks me to stay.”
I sat on the low edge of the path.
He remained standing.
“I almost didn’t give you the shelf.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought it might feel like I was trying to be him.”
I looked at my father’s name.
“You aren’t.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t need you to be.”
Gabriel nodded.
“I know that now.”
A breeze moved the trees behind us.
I brushed a little dirt from my hands.
“Sometimes I’m afraid that if I stop missing them properly, I’ll lose them.”
“What does properly mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Enough.”
“All the time.”
He sat beside me.
“I think about my father less on some days now.”
I turned.
“Does that frighten you?”
“Yes.”
“Does it help?”
He considered.
“Sometimes.”
We looked at the two stones.
I had once believed healing would make grief smaller.
Instead, life had grown around it.
There were jobs.
Shopping lists.
Arguments.
Daniel calling to complain about an exam.
Gabriel sending photographs of a cupboard door Martin insisted was crooked.
My parents were no less dead.
I simply had more places to stand.
“I don’t think we’re forgetting them,” I said.
Gabriel shook his head.
“No.”
Then he looked toward my mother’s grave.
“She’d be furious about that argument.”
“Which part?”
“Us doing it over lunch.”
I laughed.
“She’d say there was nothing wrong with leftovers.”
“She’d be right.”
We sat until the cold began to reach through our coats.
Then we went home.
Lucy’s Horse
The horse was finished in November.
Gabriel kept the red bridle.
Painted the mane yellow.
Made four new wheels because matching one old wheel had become more trouble than replacing the set.
He left my father’s thumbprint untouched.
Underneath, beside the old pencil measurements, he wrote his own name and the date.
Not over my father’s work.
Beside it.
Walter came with Lucy and the children.
This time, he wore the same tie and refused to discuss it.
The little girl saw the horse before anyone spoke.
“Is it ready?”
Gabriel nodded.
She looked at her mother.
Lucy smiled.
“Go on.”
The child climbed on.
Her brother immediately wanted a turn.
Within seconds, they were arguing.
Walter began to laugh.
Not politely.
Not carefully.
A full, startled laugh that seemed to surprise him.
Lucy covered her mouth.
I looked away.
Gabriel stood beside the bench, one hand resting on the wood.
For once, he did not look as though he was waiting to find out whether he had done enough.
The horse rolled across the workshop floor.
A child shouted.
Martin complained that someone would hit a cupboard.
Walter laughed again.
It was not a promise fulfilled exactly as intended.
The girl it had been made for was grown.
The man who had begun it was gone.
Twenty years could not be handed back with a set of new wheels.
But Lucy’s daughter leaned over the yellow mane and called to her great-grandfather.
“Look!”
Walter looked.
And he was there to see it.
An Invitation With No Obligation
Before they left, I invited Walter to lunch.
He frowned.
“When?”
“Sunday.”
“What time?”
“One.”
“What are you serving?”
I blinked.
“Chicken, probably.”
“Probably?”
Gabriel turned away, smiling.
“I haven’t bought it yet.”
Walter considered.
“Will there be gravy?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
Then he added, “I may not come.”
“That’s all right.”
He looked at me sharply.
“You won’t be offended?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Lucy helped him toward the car.
He stopped at the door.
“If I don’t come, I’ll telephone.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded.
A small agreement.
A little clarity.
On Sunday, he arrived at twelve forty-five with a jar of pickled onions.
“I was early,” he announced.
“The bus was cooperative.”
I took his coat.
Gabriel offered to drive him home afterward.
Walter accepted.
Then he went into the dining room and asked Daniel what he did.
Daniel began explaining his training.
Walter listened with complete seriousness.
By the time I carried in the potatoes, they were discussing the wiring in Walter’s house.
I looked at Gabriel.
He was watching them too.
Neither of us said anything.
There were some things we had learned not to turn into speeches.
The Things That Continued
Winter came quietly that year.
The first frost silvered the garden.
The gate stuck.
The oven burned the left side of a tray of biscuits.
Life remained stubbornly itself.
Caroline and Daniel still had difficult days.
Sometimes he left a visit angry.
Sometimes she called me and began to ask what she should do.
Then stopped herself.
“I should ask him.”
“Yes,” I said.
She usually did.
Gabriel hired his first full-time employee.
A woman named Nessa who could repair a drawer without discussing it for twenty minutes.
Martin approved of her immediately.
Gabriel pretended not to be wounded.
Walter came for lunch three more times.
Missed one because he preferred to listen to a radio program.
Called to tell me so.
I thanked him.
My aunt began spending more weekends away with a man she described as “a friend.”
We all behaved as though this explained the new coat, the careful hair, and her sudden interest in train timetables.
Nobody believed her.
Nobody pressed.
And one evening, while washing dishes, I realized I had gone almost an entire day without replaying the past.
No hospital room.
No road.
No porch.
No little girl asking whether the pie was for dinner.
For a moment, guilt rose.
Then I heard Gabriel in the other room, arguing with Daniel about a film.
I dried my hands.
Went in.
Sat down.
The past waited.
It could wait.
The Light Upstairs
The next spring, Gabriel stayed late after dinner.
We were clearing the table when he looked toward the ceiling.
“Your bedroom light’s on.”
“I know.”
“You always leave it on now?”
“Sometimes.”
He put down a plate.
“Your mother used to.”
I turned.
“What?”
“Leave that light on.”
“When?”
He hesitated.
“After you moved away.”
I looked toward the hallway.
“Why?”
“She said the house looked less empty.”
My throat tightened.
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“No.”
I sat down.
“Tell me.”
He leaned against the counter.
“Not every night.”
“Sometimes when she knew you were working late.”
“Sometimes after you called.”
I stared at my hands.
“Did she think I’d come home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe sometimes.”
“Maybe she just liked knowing where your room was.”
The kitchen was quiet.
Upstairs, a rectangle of warm light lay across the landing.
I thought of all the nights I had lived in another city believing my mother had settled easily into my absence.
The truth was not a correction I could apply to everything.
She had still failed to call sometimes.
I had too.
We had both mistaken stubbornness for safety.
But I could picture her at the bottom of the stairs.
Looking up.
Leaving the light.
“She could have told me,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I might have come.”
“Yes.”
The tears arrived slowly.
Not the violent grief of the first year.
Something gentler and, in some ways, harder.
Gabriel sat beside me.
He did not tell me what my mother would have wanted.
He did not tell me to forgive myself.
He stayed.
After a while, I went upstairs.
My old room was different now.
A guest bed.
Clean curtains.
A chair beside the window.
I stood in the doorway.
Then I went to my own bedroom.
The shelf Gabriel had made was above the desk.
The little blue whale sat between two books.
I touched it.
Downstairs, I heard him turn on the kettle.
For a moment, the house seemed full of all its years at once.
My father measuring the wall.
My mother climbing the stairs with folded sheets.
A boy outside, watching for the kitchen door.
Me leaving.
Me returning.
I could not repair all of it.
I did not have to do it that night.
When I went downstairs, Gabriel had made tea.
He looked up.
“All right?”
I sat opposite him.
“Not entirely.”
He nodded.
“Tea might help.”
“It usually does.”
We drank.
The room upstairs stayed lit.
Before He Left
Near midnight, Gabriel put on his coat.
I walked him to the door.
The garden smelled of rain.
His car stood beneath the streetlamp.
For a moment, he searched his pocket.
“Forgot something?” I asked.
“No.”
He brought out his keys.
My house key was there among them.
No longer separate.
No longer kept where he could check it easily.
Just one key on an ordinary ring.
He saw me looking.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“We have discussed that answer.”
I smiled.
“Yes.”
“We have.”
He opened the door.
Then stopped.
“Walter called.”
“What did he want?”
“To know whether you were making gravy Sunday.”
“Tell him yes.”
“I did.”
“He said he’ll come, then.”
“Did he?”
“He’s bringing a friend.”
I looked at him.
“What friend?”
“Apparently the woman who lives three doors down.”
I began to laugh.
“Does Lucy know?”
“He said she can find out at lunch.”
Gabriel grinned.
Then stepped onto the porch.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
He walked to the car.
I stayed in the doorway until he opened it.
Then, before getting in, he looked back.
Not toward the dark strip of garden behind the house.
Not toward the place where the shed had stood.
Toward me.
He lifted a hand.
I lifted mine.
Then he drove home.
I closed the door.
Checked the lock.
Went into the kitchen.
On the table lay my father’s old list, protected now inside a clear sleeve.
Jobs to finish.
Some names I would never find.
Some tasks that no longer mattered.
Some promises that belonged to people who were gone.
I put it in the drawer beside my mother’s letters.
Then I took out a clean sheet of paper.
Sunday lunch.
Chicken.
Potatoes.
Apples.
More chairs.
I counted.
Crossed out the number.
Added another.
Upstairs, the light shone across the landing.
I left it on while I finished the list…..
