I don’t remember the cardigan. I probably wore it. It sounds right. The sweet tea is right. The ham is right. She remembers details of that day that I had buried so deep I couldn’t have found them if I tried, and I think I know why she kept them and I know why I buried them.

She didn’t cry. I did, a little, but I tried to keep it together because I didn’t want her to feel like she had to comfort me. She drank her tea and she let me sit with it and she was, somehow, kind. Not warm exactly, but kind. Patient. The way she probably is with the families she visits for work, I think. She has this ability to hold space for something painful without making it go away, and I wonder if she learned that in training or if she learned it at sixteen at an Easter table, practicing.

We sat there for almost two hours. We talked about her job a little. We talked about Cheryl, who has been out of Mia’s life for a couple of years now for other reasons, different ones. We talked about small things too, regular things, the kind of conversation you have when two people are trying to figure out if there’s something left between them or if the thing that was there before is just gone.

I don’t know what we are now. I drove home and I sat in my driveway for a while before going inside. I think she’s open to something. I think I haven’t earned it yet. Some days I think this conversation was a beginning of something and some days I think it was just her giving me the truth I owed her and finally collecting. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just know that I wake up in the mornings now and I hear it.

Who wants more ham.

I said that. I have to live with that.