When I didn’t answer, she turned to me. I averted my gaze—I knew what she wanted. I always did. She wanted me to say I’d also forgotten about him.

I couldn’t and didn’t say it.

That night, Hutch infused my dreams. Like humidity in the summer air, his scent and memory filtered into the darkness and behind the curtain of sleep, where no one can control who or what shows up in the dream world. I sit on his lap, my legs wrapped around his waist. I bite his bottom lip, gently. He watches me paint, and then he waves good-bye from a plane’s window. He walks me through a house with many rooms.

By dawn I rose and stood alone in the kitchen, drinking coffee. If I felt guilty, it was for allowing him into my bedroom, if only in dreams.

My need for Hutch had once been rooted deeply into my bones so that I’d felt the desire not as a part of me, but as me completely. But I wasn’t that woman anymore. I’d been married to Rusty Calvin for over twenty years. I was a wife. And mother.

To shake off the night’s ancient emotions, I read the article about the art show in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I took the newspaper back to the bedroom to show Rusty, but he was in the shower, so I set it on the dresser. I lifted the phone and called Mother. She didn’t answer and I left her a message, thanking her for such a wonderful evening and reminding her to get the AJC.

Would I have said anything different if I’d known it would be my last message to her?

Of course.

Dishes clanged against one another as I emptied the dishwasher, when startlingly a cardinal slammed sideways against my kitchen window, her wing swiping the pane with red and brown feathers falling loose onto the outside sill. I stood, taking in a sharp breath and watching the bird fall. For the past twenty years of my married life I’d stood at that kitchen window, in that spot, for more hours than I could count, yet I’d never seen a bird fly into the glass.

The window overlooked the backyard—a manicured manifestation of suburban gardening and lawn care. Our swimming pool was still and quiet, the surface unruffled. A pot of geraniums had fallen over, and potting soil was a russet stain against the cream travertine tiles surrounding the hot tub. My hand lifted to the window in a late response, as if I could possibly tell the bird to stop.