I had relationships.
A woman named Carol, whom I genuinely loved for four years, told me gently and correctly that she felt like she was competing with someone who wasn’t in the room.
She wasn’t wrong.
I kept one photograph of Lily in the top drawer of my nightstand. The way she was half-turned toward the camera, laughing at something out of frame. The small scar on her collarbone. The way her hair sat differently on the left side than on the right.
Thirty years is a long time to know a photograph by heart.
I kept one photograph of Lily.
***
This year’s birthday started the same way all the others do.
I was out in the yard before seven, the mower running, the noise doing its job.
That’s when I heard the side gate.
I killed the mower engine and turned around, already irritated.
And then I stopped.
