They sat at their own dining room table, just the two of them. An elegant platter of roast, potatoes and carrots was before them. Their china and silver and crystal shone. Charles served them both, still in his suit. The sun through the lace curtained window was a pillar. It was true perpendicular and the world was slanted against it.
“How could a person blame their sin on their parents?” Dorothy said.
“People will blame anyone. Just not themselves.”
“What if I never knew them?”
“Would that make it easier to blame them?” Charles said.
“It doesn’t,” Dorothy said. “Not for me.”
“And what about being a parent? How much blame can we take on ourselves for our child?”
“I take it all, Charles.”
“You can’t.”
“I do anyway.”
“Some of it is mine.”
“We share it, then,” Dorothy said.
“Besides, I have enough faults of my own.”
She matched his sigh. “You’re all I have, Charles. With all your faults, I still love you.”
Hs smiled. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he said.
“Whatever you did, I must have done the same thing.”
“You deserve me?” Charles laughed. “Then whatever you did, it must have been very bad. I wonder who we can blame.”
They finished their meal mostly in silence. Charles cleared the table and Dorothy put an apron over her dress to clean the kitchen. Then still with no words she took off the apron and Charles held out the jacket she’d worn in the morning. He held open the car door for her and then drove a short way to an open, quiet place.
There was another quiet here; not books, not words at all; but here there was also stone.
A slight chill wind attended them. They walked a gravel path around the brow of a low hill and through the shadow of a single old tree, then a few steps over emerald grass bursting with spring life, and stopped at a headstone among others. It said William Beale and Our Dearly Beloved Son.