It was her custom, no matter what might have occurred during the day, to look ahead each night before falling asleep to something happy in the next day. More often than not the something was simple, such as a trip to browse in the local bookstore, or an afternoon with an old friend. It might even be something quite trivial, like having pancakes and sausage for breakfast on a winter morning. Small comforts, she often thought, do help to soften large griefs, no matter what anyone says. Not, she would mentally add, that I am any great authority on grief. I have had very few of them: my husband’s death, and the deaths of poor Cynthia’s twins. This present sorrow could not possibly compare with those. Nevertheless, the breach between her sons had gone on far too long, and it hurt. Consider all those expressions fixed in the language, like blood brothers, and brotherly love; those two men were too old and too intelligent to cast such precious bonds away. Then there were other things that offended her sense of rightness: the impending and, in her opinion, entirely unnecessary divorce between Cynthia and her nice young husband was one.
