"I don't talk about her," he says finally. "My mom. Not the way he does. He can just say her name and tell a story and smile about it, and I can't do that. I hear him do it and I want to, but when I try, everything locks up."
"That's okay."
"It's been eleven years."
"There's no timeline on that, Callahan." I reach up and touch his face, feeling the tension there. "Grief doesn't expire."
He nods, his eyes dropping to somewhere around my collarbone, and I decide not to push.
"Come on," I say, taking his hand. "Let's go sit with him."
The workshop is cold, the air thick with sawdust and the rich, living smell of wood. Will is at the bench with a piece of walnut clamped in a vise, a chisel in his hand, old country music playing low on the radio.
He brightens when we enter, his whole face opening like a door swinging wide.
"Well." He sets the chisel down and wipes his hands on a rag.
"My favorite people. Both of you here at the same time. What a day."
The warmth of his words is soothing. Callahan pulls over the old wooden chair for me, and takes the folding chair for himself.
Callahan leans forward with his elbows on his knees andhis hands clasped, his eyes on his father's hands. His face is so still, which tells me he's listening harder than he looks.
"My Anna used to keep me company.” He glances at his son, a look passes between them that I can only witness, not understand
"Your mother could sit still longer than anyone I ever met," Will says. "And that made the time go so fast."
"Is that why you talk to her?" I ask gently. "To make the time go by?"
Something complicated crosses his face, surprised maybe, because no one has ever confronted him with it.
"Time's not going by fast enough," he says, simple. "Not until I can see my Anna again."
I swallow hard because Will deserves my presence, not my tears. He studies Callahan, then me.
"I know what you two are doing," he patiently says. "You don't need to worry."
"Dad," Callahan starts, but is quickly interrupted.
"I'm not losing my mind." Will holds up a hand. "I know she's gone. I've known she's gone every single morning for eleven years. I wake up and the bed is empty and I know."
He pauses, rubbing a thumb along the edge of the bench.
"But when I'm in here, working, I can picture her on that stool right there. I can't see her, but I know where she'd be sitting, and I know what she'd say to anything I told her, because I knew that woman all of my life and she was the most predictable and surprising person I ever met. Both at the same time."
He drops his gaze to the stool where I'm sitting, and his brown eyes, Callahan's eyes in a different shade, crease at the corners with something that isn't quite a smile.
"I know she's dead and she's not here," he says, choking on the word dead. "But she's here." He puts the tip of four fingers right over his heart. "So I talk to her. And she talks back. In here, where it counts."
Callahan clears his throat. He's still leaning forward, hands still clasped, and I see the effort it's taking him to hold himself together.
"Eleven years is a long time, Dad." He is struggling so much. "Most people would have moved on. Remarried."
Will takes a few seconds to answer, his eyes somewhere past both of us, somewhere we can't follow.
"God put me on this earth to love her, Cal,” he says. "And I'm not done yet."
I hear a short, hard exhale that sounds painful from Callahan. I reach over without looking and find his hand on his knee, and squeeze. He squeezes back tightly. I let go right after, hopefully passing it as a friendly gesture rather than what he and I are.
