Chapter 33As promised, Philip and I stayed for another full week, doting on my mother, getting her out of the house, taking road trips, eating and socializing with other people as the days and nights moved on with and without us.
“I’ll miss your father belly-aching about everything,” my mother said, staring out the Italian restaurant’s front glass windows onto a pedestrian-filled sidewalk. “I’d give back all the fights and unfriendly things we’d put each other through just to have him back.” She blew on the ribbons of steam rising from her coffee cup. “His bickering about the way I left old tea bags in the kitchen sink, or the many times I’d annoy him by chewing too loudly on my Fritos.” She shook her head, set her cup down on the table, clinking it loudly against the plate of seafood lin
