On the other side stood June Avery in a black coat despite the bright weather, one hand still on the bouquet she had just placed.
June was fifty-eight, younger than Eleanor by twelve years and old enough to be tired of defending herself, though not tired enough to stop. Her dark purse hung from one shoulder. Her hair, once a rich chestnut, was now laced with early gray at the temples she never bothered to dye, and her expression held the same combination Michael had seen in her for years now: sorrow, nerve, and the knowledge that she was walking into rooms where people had already decided what role she played.
Michael planted himself in the narrow strip of grass between them and looked first at his mother, then at his father’s widow, then immediately hated the way his mind split the words.
He was forty-five, too old to feel like a child trapped in the middle of grown people’s war, and yet there he was again, broad-shouldered, sweating through a pressed white shirt under the noon sun, trying to place his body where once his father’s had never learned to go. He had his father’s height and his mother’s blue eyes. He also had, to his deep annoyance, some version of both of their capacities for stubbornness, which was probably why both women still looked at him as if he were the bridge and the border at the same time.
Eleanor drew the first breath sharp enough to become speech.
“I was his wife for thirty-one years,” she said.
June did not step back. She set the flowers down fully, straightened, and answered without raising her voice. “I was his wife when he died.”
Michael closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.