Siobhan acquired a fondness for walking alone. Springtime in Rock Creek Park, especially, allowed her to get away from the cramped apartment she shared with Patrick. After her son left for the Commerce Department, she sat at the kitchen table and looked at the window at Dupont Circle, and finished her tea. The dead quiet always went right to her bones. After tea, she’d go walking, always down to Rock Creek Park.
Halfway, she always sat on a bench in front of a pond. Winters, the pond stared back at her like gray glass. Summers, she saw the reflections of chlorophyll-filled trees and bushes from the other end. Spring and fall were always the hardest. She’d lost Agnes on Mother’s Day, dead to her with that husband in Philadelphia – the refrain kept echoing in her head, my daughter is lost to me – and she’d lost her own husband the day before Thanskgiving, so many years ago. And now she lived with her middle-aged son in a small apartment in a strange city she didn’t know. Except for this bench in this park in front of this pond.
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