My Daughter Tried to Keep Me Out of the Lake House I Built, But When She Arrived for the Fourth of July, I Had Already Made Room

to listen. Claudette collected shells and arranged them on the kitchen windowsill every evening like a little altar to astonishment.

And every night, after supper, we lit a candle beside Samuel’s photograph.

Each woman said one thing she wished someone had told her when she was younger.

Hattie said, “You are allowed to stop giving.”

Ernestine said, “The continue reading …