I fried the onions and the liver, mixed together the potatoes and the cabbage and fried that too. I remembered the winter of ’47, the pair of us in the kitchen in our overcoats. I had been stirring soup while James was opening a bag of coal. At that time, coal was sometimes sold short, the bag filled up with a makeweight of useless stones. I heard a shout of rage and looked up to see James pulling out an enormous chunk of slate. “Look at it!” he bellowed. “It must weigh five pounds!” He went outside and threw the slate on the ground, and when it broke he stamped separately on every single broken piece, swearing so loudly that our neighbor opened his window and called down, “Mr. Acton. I have not heard such language since the Battle of Bréville. Shame on you, sir, as a man of the cloth.” We had embraced there in the garden, trembling with cold and with silent laughter.

How precious that moment seemed now.

The onions were browning. I took the pan off the heat.

—

We ate our supper and afterward sat in the parlor. James read a book while I sat leaning my head against the wing of the armchair. I glanced sideways at the title of his book as the fire crackled. The Shaking of the Foundations.

“What’s your book about?”

He put it down. “It’s a collection of sermons by Paul Tillich. I’m reading one about hope.” He quoted. “For we are saved by hope: but hope for that which is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. That’s the Bible. Romans 8, verses 24–25.”

“And what does Tillich say about this?”

“I don’t know yet. Do you want to listen to the gramophone, darling? Some piano? I could put on the William Kapell.”

“It’s true, isn’t it,” I said. “You can’t hope for something you can already see coming. True hope, truly patient waiting, is for things that aren’t there yet. That might never be there.”

He got up and pulled the Kapell from its sleeve. I watched him place the disc on the turntable, then crouch down in order to settle the needle onto the disk. When he did normal things like this it was worse because he moved exactly like his old self.

I might hope that James would come to be himself again. There was no evidence of that happening, of course. But that was why it was true hope.

“I’ve found a woman to talk to. She lost her son at birth. She’s very nice.”

He turned his head, the relief plain on his face. “Oh, I’m so pleased. Do I know her?”

“No. I hardly know her myself.”