While I waited, I made lunch.
This is something I have noticed about myself in moments of difficulty, that I become very practical. I make food. I do the dishes. I attend to whatever is directly in front of me that can be attended to, not as avoidance but because the body’s ordinary requirements continue regardless of what the mind is managing, and meeting them is its own form of steadiness.
Patricia called back in forty minutes.
“The stone house,” she said. “Tell me exactly how the gift was documented.”
I told her. The velvet box. The key. The conversation on the patio.
“And the paperwork?”
I had not yet transferred the deed. I had intended to do it after the wedding, wanting to give them time to settle into the marriage before managing a property transfer. The gift had been the key and the intention and the conversation, all of it real, but the legal documentation had not yet been completed.
