Margaret brought nothing but herself. Diane brought Walter in a carrier, then released him to inspect the baseboards. Helen poured coffee into three cups that matched, because she had bought a set for one and then expanded it, which seemed as good a metaphor as any.
They did not talk about Robert at first. They talked about the blue front door on Maple, about the toddler who had learned to walk, about Diane's job and Margaret's dog and Helen's book club's disastrous attempt to discuss a novel nobody finished. The conversation moved the way old rivers move — around obstacles, toward something that might eventually be called peace if no one demanded the word too soon.
Near the end of the hour, Diane set her cup down and looked at Margaret.
"The house on Maple does not go to you," she said, and the sentence was no longer an accusation. It was a memory, spoken aloud so it could finally finish happening. "It went through you. And then we decided what to do with the rest of our lives. I still wish he'd been braver. I still wish you'd been his nurse and nothing else. But I'm glad my mother didn't have to become cruel to survive him."
Margaret's eyes shone. "I'm glad you didn't either."
Helen reached out and touched both their hands, briefly, the way a person touches the edges of a map to make sure the borders are where she left them. Outside, the late-afternoon light — that same late-afternoon light, loyal as a dog and twice as complicated — filled the condominium without wood paneling to lean against. On the white wall, the photographs from the mantel kept their vigil: beach, graduation, Christmas, Robert in his gray suit the year he retired, smiling as if retirement were a joke he had finally been allowed to tell.
Helen looked at the photograph and did not look away.