Chapter 10: One Cup
Three weeks after the deed was filed, Patrice called.
"I hope it's all right that I'm calling," she said.
"Of course it is."
"I wanted to tell you — Rhonda has dropped it.
Completely.
Curtis Briggs apparently moved on to another property.
And Rhonda…" A pause.
"She hasn't said anything to me directly.
But she's stopped talking about the house.
I think she knows it's finished."
"Thank you for telling me."
"I also wanted to say —" Patrice stopped.
Started again.
"I should have spoken up sooner.
Years ago.
I knew what Rhonda was doing with Donna.
I knew it wasn't right.
I told myself it wasn't my business." Another pause.
"It was my business.
He was my brother."
"Patrice," I said.
"Michael didn't blame you.
He said so in the letter."
A long silence.
"He was always too generous," she said, and her voice broke slightly on the last word.
"He was," I agreed.
We talked for another half hour — about Michael, about small things, about a photograph Patrice had found of the four siblings as children that she wanted to send me if I wanted it.
I told her I did.
Before she hung up, she said she'd like to come by sometime, if that was all right.
To see the house.
To sit on the porch, maybe.
"Anytime," I said.
"I mean that."
After we hung up, I stood in the kitchen for a moment.
Then I opened the cabinet and took out two coffee mugs.
I set one on the counter.
I put the other one back.
I made my coffee, carried it to the porch, and sat in the morning light.
The maple tree was still green, still full, still exactly where we had planted it.
The roots had had twelve years to go down.
They would hold.
I thought about the unknown number — the friend who had warned me, who had loved Michael too, who might tell me someday.
I didn't know who it was.
I found, sitting there in the morning with my coffee, that I didn't need to know yet.
Some things could wait.
The neighborhood was waking up around me.
A car backed out of a driveway.
A dog barked twice and went quiet.
The light came through the maple leaves the way it always had, breaking into pieces, scattering across the porch floor.
I stayed until the coffee was gone.
Then I went inside.
The house knew the sound of my voice and the way I moved through it in the morning.
Michael had said so.
I believed him.
---
Some promises are made in quiet moments, with no witnesses — just two people and the life they've built together.
Laura kept hers.
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