Joan opened her hand, and in her palm lay a small, worn brass thimble. Craig looked as though he might be sick. “Mom, that was Grandma’s,” he whispered. “I know whose it was,” Joan said evenly. “Your father gave me a bag of socks in a hospital bed just like this one, thirty-four years ago, and I have kept this thimble ever since to remember what I swore I would never allow my son to become.”

She turned to me and her voice softened. “Sweetheart, you are not sewing anything.” Then she faced Craig again. “You will sit in that chair, and you will listen.” The door opened once more, and a nurse stepped in, followed by Craig’s father, Harold, leaning on a cane, his face grim. “I heard everything in the hallway,” he said quietly. “Son, it is time you learned what I never learned until too late.”