He was way too tall to need it now. He stood on it anyway.
“You have to flip it when the bubbles pop,” he said. “Not before. Dad always said.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m the one who taught him.”
“No you didn’t.”
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t.”
He took the spatula from me. He waited for the bubbles to pop. He flipped it. It came out perfect.
Then, without looking at me, he started to hum.
I stood beside him in our little yellow kitchen and hummed with him. Neither of us sang the words. We didn’t need to.
Things didn’t fix themselves overnight. I wish I could tell you they did. Grief doesn’t work like that, and neither do twelve year old boys.
But things started to change.
The next week, Ray came over for Sunday dinner. He brought his wife, Lucia, and his two daughters, who were teenagers now and spent the whole meal on their phones, and it was so normal and so loud that at one point I had to go stand in the pantry for a minute just to breathe.
