PART 77 — THE SECOND DATE
For our second date, we walked through a public garden.
It was too early in the year for much to be flowering.
Signs identified plants that mostly looked like sticks.
Daniel read several aloud with exaggerated seriousness.
I told him my grandmother would have considered paying admission to see dormant shrubs an unusual decision.
He asked about her.
This time, I answered more fully.
“She raised me in most of the ways that mattered.”
“Is she still alive?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
We kept walking.
He did not immediately ask how she died.
He did not tell me he understood because his own grandmother had died.
He allowed the information to be mine.
Near a bench, he reached toward my hand.
I stepped back before I decided to.
His hand stopped.
“Sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Still.”
He put his hands in his coat pockets.
We stood in an awkward silence.
I could hear a gardener’s wheelbarrow rattling along a nearby path.
“I need things to happen slowly,” I said.
“Okay.”
“I mean actually slowly.”
“Not slowly for ten minutes.”
He smiled a little.
“I understand.”
I looked at him.
“You might not yet.”
“That’s fair.”
“I can listen.”
It would have been easy for him to sound wounded.
Easy to ask whether I thought he was dangerous.
Easy to make me explain my whole life so he could decide my reaction was reasonable.
He did none of that.
We finished the walk.
At the café afterward, we argued about whether lemon cake was better than chocolate.
The date was allowed to continue without my boundary becoming its central problem.
PART 78 — TELLING HIM
I told Daniel about Dad on our fourth date.
We were sitting in my kitchen.
Dinner was finished.
He had asked whether he could help with the dishes.
I said yes.
He dried while I washed.
The conversation had turned to families.
He asked whether my father lived nearby.
I turned off the tap.
“There’s something you should know.”
Daniel set the towel down.
“Okay.”
I dried my hands.
Then I told him.
Not every number.
Not every proceeding.
The shape of it.
Mom’s death.
Grandma.
The trust.
The false documents.
The bank.
He listened without interrupting.
Once, he asked whether I wanted a break.
I said no.
When I finished, he looked at the table for a moment.
Then he said:
“Thank you for telling me.”
I waited.
No anger performed on my behalf.
No promise that he would keep me safe forever.
No claim that he would have handled Dad differently.
“Does that change anything?” I asked.
“It tells me more about you.”
“Not whether I want to be here.”
I looked away.
He continued carefully.
“I might get things wrong.”
“If I do, I’d rather you tell me.”
“I don’t want you feeling you have to make everything comfortable.”
I laughed once.
A small, unsteady sound.
“That habit is difficult.”
“I believe you.”
We returned to the dishes.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then he held up a wooden spoon.
“Where does this go?”
“The drawer beside the stove.”
He put it there.
The simplicity of that moment stayed with me.
I had told him something painful.
Then we had continued being two people in a kitchen.
PART 3-My grandmother’s savings passbook was deemed useless by my father, who threw it into her grave.
