Her mother set them in the kitchen without comment.
Hank stayed outside until Ruth opened the door and asked whether he intended to become part of the hedge. He came in carrying his helmet, rain sliding from his shoulders. He took off his boots without being asked.
Toast emerged from under the couch, sniffed a boot, and sat on it.
“Traitor,” Sarah told him.
The cat began to wash.
For half an hour, they did ordinary things. Ruth heated soup. Diana found bowls. Hank fixed the loose screw on a kitchen chair after asking where the screwdriver was. Sarah fed Toast and changed the water in a glass because she could not stop noticing that the rim smelled faintly of the cupboard.
When they finally sat at the table, nobody knew how to begin.
Ruth took the first spoonful.
“Your father hated tomato soup,” she said.
Sarah looked up.
“He did not,” Diana said automatically. “He hated the canned kind with water. He liked it with milk.”
“Then he should have said that instead of looking betrayed every time I fed him.”
Hank smiled into his bowl.
Sarah stared at all three of them.
“What?” Diana asked.
“You can just do that?”
“Do what?”
“Talk about him. Like he's a person.”
The smile left Hank's face.
Ruth set down her spoon. “He was.”
“I know. I mean you have all this.” Sarah made a helpless gesture toward the table. “Soup. Jokes. Things he liked. You have a whole man in your heads.”
Diana's eyes filled.
Sarah shook her head. “Don't cry. I can't do that right now. Just tell me something.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Anything.”
For once, her mother did not search for a safe version.
“He sang badly,” Diana said. “Loudly. He thought if he got enough words wrong, I wouldn't notice he couldn't carry a tune.”
Ruth nodded. “I noticed.”
“He called every dog captain,” Hank said. “No reason. Just decided dogs had earned rank.”
Sarah looked at him.
“He once helped a woman change a tire in a grocery store lot,” Diana said. “She insisted on paying him. He refused. She gave him a zucchini instead.”
“Enormous thing,” Hank said. “Could have used it to level a table.”
“He carried it home like a trophy.”
Sarah laughed before she could stop herself.
The room changed around the sound.
Diana did not reach for it. Nobody said there you are, or that's better, or any of the things people said when they wanted pain to finish on schedule. They let her laugh, and when it turned to tears, they let that happen too.
Later, while Diana washed the bowls and Ruth spoke to Velez in the hall, Sarah found Hank on the porch.
He stood beneath the roof, watching rain drip from the cedar branches.
“Did you have kids?” she asked.
“No.”
“Ever want them?”
“Yes.”
She waited.
He rubbed a thumb across the scar on his knuckle. “My wife did too. We lost a baby before she was born. Then we lost each other in all the things we didn't say about it.”
“Were you drinking then?”
“Yes.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Thank you.”
He did not tell her it was long ago. She appreciated that more than she expected.
“Is she alive? Your wife?”
“Her name's Claire. She's in Spokane. Married to a good man who grows roses badly.”
“How do you know?”
“She sends pictures at Christmas.”
Sarah leaned against the doorframe. “That's strange.”
“Most things are if you wait long enough.”
She watched the water run along the porch step.
“Did my dad know about your baby?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Hank looked out into the rain.
“Nothing at first. He came over with groceries and fixed a leak under the sink. I hadn't told him about the leak. He just saw the bucket.”
Sarah pictured the man in the photograph kneeling on a kitchen floor.
“Then?”
“He told me I didn't have to turn being sad into being cruel.”
“Were you?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you stayed friends?”
“He wasn't confused about who I was. He just believed I could do better than I was doing.”
Sarah put her hands in the borrowed jacket's pockets.
“Is that why you helped me?”
Hank turned toward her fully.
“It's part of why I should have been there years ago. This morning was because you needed help.”
“You don't get him back by saving me.”
“I know.”
“You don't get to stop feeling guilty.”
“I know that too.”