“You’ve been looking at it all night,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said.
“Hannah.” Her voice shifted into something I recognized from childhood — the tone that meant she was about to reframe the conversation as being about my behavior rather than her actions. “I hear that you’re hurting. This is a terrible week. If I said something wrong last night, I’m sorry. But making this into a whole investigation isn’t going to bring Dad back.”
“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t.”
“Then maybe we should focus on what actually matters.”
“The document is what matters,” I said. “The complete document. I’d like to see it.”
The call ended shortly after that. Not with a fight — we were both too careful for that, or too tired. Just the gradual winding down of two people who had reached the limit of what could be said without saying more than either of us was ready to say.
I put my phone down and ate some of the eggs, which had gone cold.
## The Night Before the Reading
I’ve thought about this more than I should have: what was happening the night before Vanessa read from those papers.
The funeral was Saturday. The reading was Tuesday evening. That’s three days. Three days in which Vanessa had those papers and I did not, in which she knew what she was going to read and I was still in the phase of showing up to things and being handed food I didn’t eat and thanking people I didn’t recognize.