“I’m not.” She crossed the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum, took the catalog from my hand, and riffled through it. “My husband was.”
Something about the way she said was made me look up.
She put the catalog down and looked at me directly. “Harry died five years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She stood before me, her fingers neatly laced together. “It was sudden and rather horrible, but I’m pretty much over the shock of it now.”
“Did you and Harry have any children?”
Her face took on a look of such infinite sadness that I wanted to snatch back my words. Her eyes, her face, her hands — everything about her body grew still.
“I had a daughter,” she said. “But she died, too.”
To my relief, the teakettle screamed, rescuing me. Virginia hurried over to the stove where she bustled about prepa
