She read the message.
She said: groceries.
I said: apparently.
She looked at the table. She looked at the counters. She looked at the coffee and the marmalade. She looked at the house in the way she had looked at it many times over the twenty months of building it, with the full attention of someone who knows everything that went into it and who understands what the everything cost.
She said: they’re missing this.
I said: they’re missing dinner.
She put my phone down.
She said: no, Miranda.
She said: they’re missing you.
She said it without softening it. That was Megan. She said the true thing in the register of the true thing, without wrapping it in something easier.
I said: I know.
She said: do you actually know.
I said: yes. I actually know.
She said: because you keep reaching.
I said: yes.
She said: and reaching toward something that keeps not being there.
