I picked up on the second ring that Tuesday like always and said hello before Patsy even spoke. She started right in about the hydrangeas in her backyard turning that deep blue color she liked. Then the words just stopped.

I said her name once. Then again. And a third time. Nothing came back except the empty line.

The paramedics told me later it was quick. A stroke or something that took her while she stood there by the phone. I did not touch my own phone for days after that. Every time I walked past it I thought about how fast everything can just end mid-sentence.

Patsy and I started those morning calls back in 1949 after my husband passed. She lived two blocks over and had two little girls at the time. She would ring me up at 7:15 sharp before the kids woke up and we would talk about whatever came to mind. The price of milk. What the preacher said on Sunday. How her roses were doing that year. It became the one steady thing in my day.

We never ran out of things even when we were just sitting in the quiet together. She would say something small like “I put a load of towels in already” and I would tell her about the letter I got from my cousin in Ohio. It was never big talk. It was just us.

My son Mark was twelve when his father died. Patsy used to bring him cookies after school and let him play in her yard with her girls. She always said he could talk to her if he needed to. I thought that was nice back then. I never knew how much it would matter later.

One morning about two months before she died Mark and I had a fight over breakfast. He wanted to marry this girl from the next town over and I thought he was too young. He slammed his chair back and told me he was done listening to me. The door banged shut behind him and that was the last time he was in my house.

Patsy called the next day at 7:15 like nothing had happened. She asked if I had any extra coffee because she was out. We talked for twenty minutes about nothing much. At the end she said real quiet “Give him a little space Helen. Boys need to figure some things out on their own.” I figured she meant well.

After she passed her oldest daughter Linda came by the house with a box of things. She set a yellow notepad on my kitchen table and said her mother kept it right by the phone. Written across the top in Patsy’s neat handwriting were the words “Things to tell Helen.”