“You should come inside,” I said at last.
“If we’re going to talk about my mother, I won’t do it on the sidewalk where the neighbors can watch.”
The house smelled of furniture polish and the wilted lilies left after the funeral.
I had not yet moved the shoes from the mat or the blue cardigan from the hook near the back door.
Mom had left those things in their usual places, as though she might be gone for an afternoon and come home before supper.
Gabriel stopped on the threshold.
“May I?”
“It’s not a museum,” I said, too sharply.
“Come in.”
He entered carefully, with the respect of a guest who remembered what it felt like to have nowhere to go.
In the kitchen, he stood beside the same table where Mom had told me the apple pie was for him.
There was a shallow dent in the wood where my brother used to knock his spoon against the edge.
