“This is going nowhere. I don’t want to fight with you. We didn’t come here for that.”

As I walked over to gently place the roses on the grave through the fence, Stefan suddenly pointed out that a chunk of the headstone had apparently been broken off and simply set back in place. When he reached in to touch it, the piece fell to the ground. “They’re going to think I did this,” he said.

“No one will think that,” I told him. “I can’t imagine how it happened. We’ll let the caretaker know.” I knelt down, and then, to my surprise, I couldn’t straighten up. Leaning on the fence, I began to cry, hard. I had never cried for Belinda, in part because her death engendered so much shock and horror that it shouldered grief aside. Time, however, had done its work, and I thought of her picking Stefan up to play tennis or go biking when he, of course, was indulging his lifelong romance with sleep. I could hear her voice, loud and deep for such a tiny thing, as she stood throwing gravel from my rose garden at Stefan’s second-floor window and calling, “Get up, you’re wasting your life!”

“Whatever you did, and whatever she did,” I said, “she loved you, and she wouldn’t have wanted you to waste your life. That sounds like a guilt trip, but it’s true.”

Stefan leaned down and half lifted me up, putting his arm around me and awkwardly shushing me, as I had shushed him hundreds of times in our life together. Huddled, we walked past the gawkers, back toward the car. When I turned to look back, the figure in the hoodie was standing under a tree watching us, as still as one of the monuments. With a jerk, I stumbled forward quicker, virtually hauling Stefan along. “Get in and lock the doors,” I told him as I took the driver’s seat.

As we pulled out, a sharp wind burst out of nowhere. Stefan huddled inside against the passenger door and the gust swept petals everywhere and the birds shrieked in the trees.

After that morning, Stefan seemed to sleep most of the rest of the week. Then one night he knocked at my bedroom door and said, “Mom, I’m sorry about the cemetery. I was so rude to you.”

I didn’t assure him that it was okay. I just accepted his apology.

In due course, Stefan’s surgeon announced he was pleased with the progress of his eye repair. It would still be some weeks before its complete functionality could be assessed. Until then, Stefan would continue to wear a patch. For the next six weeks at least, he was still to avoid heavy lifting, like bench pressing (or humping lumber, although that was no longer on the table). But he could return to some type of ordinary work.