"She asked me," Lauren said. "That part is true. Tuesday. You were getting the anti-nausea medication because the pharmacy had messed up the generic. She told me Emma would need a woman who was not trying to replace her, and that you would need a friend who did not flinch. She said, 'If you start to love him, don't insult me by pretending it happened in a vacuum after the funeral.' I told her I didn't. She said, 'Not yet is not the same as never.' I should have told you she said that. I kept it because it felt like being appointed, and I didn't want my feelings to be a task she signed. That was vanity. I see it now. I saw it before and called it privacy."
David heard the words and filed them in a part of himself that would examine them at three in the morning for the rest of his life. "The garage," he said. "I sat with you in the garage at the hospital. She was recording this in our garage. We might have been doing both at once."
"We might have," Lauren said. "I told you not to practice the after on me. I meant it. I also wanted you to look at me the way you looked at the doorway. Both of those were in the car."
Emma lifted her face. It was blotched and unafraid of being seen, which was new. "She wasn't mad," she said. "I thought she was mad. When I heard your name I thought — I thought you kissed while she was sick. I thought the wedding was a lie you were making me wear a dress for. I didn't hear the part about daylight the first time because I was so mad my ears stopped. I heard Lauren and I heard hate that I understand and I made it into a movie."
"You heard a real thing," David said. "The tenderness was real before she died. I did not kiss Lauren until a winter after. But I thought about a life that wasn't only hallways. Your mother heard it. She was not wrong."