I told Donna what had happened. She listened through all of it, asked two clarifying questions, and then she said: “How angry are you?”
“Very,” I said. “And also sad. And also something I don’t have a word for.”
“Grief,” she said.
She was right. What I was feeling under the anger was grief. Not for my husband, though he was woven through all of it. For something I hadn’t been given — the normal thing of meeting my son-in-law, of being part of the wedding, of existing in my daughter’s life in an ordinary visible way. Paige had made me disappear so thoroughly that there were people who had eaten holiday dinners and made casual conversation for eighteen months under the understanding that I was gone from the world.
I had been mourned by strangers.
“Go to the dinner,” Donna said. “You need to be in the room.”
“I know,” I said.
## Andrew Calls Me
Two days before the dinner, Andrew Lawson called me.
I had not heard his voice before. In eighteen months of knowing he existed, we had never been on the phone. It was a strange thing, hearing the voice of a person who was my son-in-law, my family by the logic of marriage, and whose voice was completely unfamiliar to me.
He sounded young and tired and careful. He said: “Mrs. Mercer? This is Andrew. Paige’s husband.”
“I know,” I said. “Hello, Andrew.”
A pause. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve been trying to figure out what to say and I still don’t have it.”