The shadows are lengthening and the sunlight has softened into afternoon's honey gold by the time I'm finished telling Kitty all about that day.
She's sitting still as a statue in the armchair opposite me, bathed in patches of multicolored light streaming in through the huge stained glass window behind us. It's like she's in an impressionist painting, streaked with red and green and blue light, and I imagine I'm spilling out my story to a brightly jewel-encrusted portrait of some noblewoman from a bygone era.
It makes it easier to talk.
The words rush out of me, a flood of grief that I didn't even realize I'd been damming up.
Kitty doesn't interrupt me, not even once – only nodding her head from time to time, listening in absolute silence. Even as I tell her about how I watched everyon
