“Still.”
“You were furious. You said you’d been saving that sandwich.”
Ben laughed.
“What happened?”
“Your grandmother said the fish would probably enjoy it.”
Helen smiled.
“That sounds like Mum.”
Jack turned the page.
He had forgotten that photograph existed.
For a moment he could hear May laughing beside the stream.
Then Sophie asked another question.
He answered.
They continued looking through the album.
That evening, after they had gone, Jack returned the photographs to the cabinet.
He no longer felt quite so certain that he was the only person carrying May’s memory.
His recollections were more complete than anyone else’s, but they could be shared.
Not all of them.
Some private things would remain private.
Others could be told, written down, or passed to the grandchildren.
He began keeping a new notebook.
It was not the same notebook in which he had once recorded May’s missed appointments and moments of confusion.
That one remained in a drawer upstairs.
The new notebook was bound in dark green cloth.
On the first page he wrote:
Things I remember about May.
He did not begin with the diagnosis.
He began with the church social in Otley, when a young woman with dark hair told him he had poured her tea incorrectly.
He wrote about their first walk together, the yellow dress, the wedding, and the small cottage they bought when Helen was four.
He wrote about their arguments.
He wrote about the winter they nearly lost their way with each other.
He wrote about her teaching, her roses, and the way she always insisted that tea tasted better from a proper pot.
He also wrote about the years of illness.
Not only the difficult parts.
He described how she had complimented his suit, how she sometimes hummed along with familiar music, and how she once told him he had a nice name.
He did not pretend those moments compensated for everything they had lost.
They were simply moments worth remembering.
Every few days, he added another page.
Sometimes he remembered something while shopping.
Sometimes a smell or a song brought back an incident he had not thought about for decades.
Once, while cleaning the sewing cabinet, he found the black-handled scissors in their proper drawer beneath a folded square of blue cotton.
He sat down with them in his hand.
He remembered the morning he found them in the refrigerator.
He remembered May standing in the doorway, irritated and suspicious.
He remembered believing that the problem would pass.
Then he placed the scissors back where they belonged.
He closed the drawer.
Downstairs, the kettle began to boil.
On the first anniversary of May’s death, Jack woke at six-thirty.
He dressed in a clean shirt, dark trousers, and the charcoal-grey jacket.
He shaved carefully.
He chose a tie May had given him for his seventieth birthday, dark blue with a small pattern that he had always thought unnecessarily elaborate.
Then he went downstairs.
The cottage was still.
Outside, the garden was wet from overnight rain.
He filled the kettle, warmed two cups, and placed them on the kitchen table.
He had not done that every day since her death. Some mornings he drank coffee. Others he made tea in a mug and carried it into the garden.
He had learned that keeping every old habit could be as exhausting as abandoning them all.
But this morning he wanted the teapot.
He sat at the table while the tea brewed.
The chair opposite him remained empty.
After a while, he looked toward the kitchen doorway.
He could still picture May standing there in her green cardigan, narrowing her eyes because she suspected him of interfering with something.
He remembered the way she said his name when she wanted help.
He remembered the way she said it when she was annoyed.
And he remembered the final years, when she sometimes spoke it as though she were learning it for the first time.
Jack poured the tea.
“Morning, May,” he said quietly.
He waited a moment.
Then he smiled at the empty chair.
“It’s Jack.”
He took a sip.
The tea was exactly the way she liked it.
Outside, the rain had stopped, and a blackbird was moving among the rose bushes.
Jack watched it through the window.
After breakfast, he would put on his coat and go into the garden. The roses needed attention, and he had promised Helen he would telephone later.
There were things to do.
There were people who still needed him.
But for a little while longer, he remained at the table, remembering the woman who had once told him that he was pouring her tea the wrong way.
He had spent fifty-five years learning how to love her as his wife, four years learning how to approach her as a stranger, and the months since her death learning how to live with the memories she could no longer share.
He wished she had remembered him.
He always would.
But he was glad she had accepted his tea.
