I laughed too, a little.
The way you laugh when something is sad and true at the same time.
I put the ring on my finger.
It fit.
I don’t know how.
I had not worn it since the wedding.
But it fit now, perfectly, as if the size had changed or my hand had or both.
I sat in Eleanor’s chair for a little while longer.
The light moved across the floor the way it always had.
Outside the window, someone was walking through the garden below, moving slowly, the way people do when they are not in a hurry to be anywhere else.
I thought about what I was going to do with what Eleanor had left me.
Not the money — that was a practical question for practical days.
I mean what she had actually left me.
The knowledge that someone had looked for me for forty years and found me and thought I was worth finding.
