Yesterday, after lunch, Naomi said she was going over to visit your brother, so, of course, I didn’t question anything. But then, as I ate a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich (cliché, I know) at the kitchen table, Naomi, for the first time since we were children, let out a sob in front of me. It was low, barely audible over the dishwasher buzzing, but then it snowballed, avalanched, until her whole body doubled, turned in on itself out of pure grief.
I got up, walked over, looked outside.
Smeared on the whitewood patio was blood, a memory rearing its god-awful head.
“I’ll clean that up,” is all I could say.
