My mother was two semesters away. I’m three.
I think she’d forgive me the extra one.
Marissa and her kids moved into the yellow house in November. Her daughter, Lily, is fourteen and has claimed the guest room I slept in. Her son, Ben, is nine. He painted the porch swing blue and fixed the squeak on the left side with a can of WD-40.
I told him not to. I kind of liked the squeak.
He said, “Uncle Julian would’ve wanted it fixed.” And he was probably right.
Denise called me in February. The hospice program had reviewed my situation, and they’d decided to let me come back once I finished school. “Just don’t marry any more patients,” she said.
“I won’t,” I told her. “He was the only one.”
The man who ran the red light in 1995 died in 2011. I found his name in an old newspaper article at the library. I read it once. Then I closed the laptop.
