I’m not sure who ended up talking to her about it, but I’m pretty sure it was Kallie. I don’t think any of our friends would have interfered that much, and Charlie’s guy friends all told him to move on and tell her he needed time. Kallie had always been very protective of her younger brother, though, and was really upset that he seemed so sad. Kallie and Ashley had become pretty good friends while she was dating Charlie, and sometimes went to lunch together. Not long after one of these lunches, Ashley stopped coming around so often and gave Charlie the necessary time to heal.

He graduated fifth in his class, and got to walk ahead of the others because of his honors. The whole group was there with air horns again, and once again we were all immensely proud of him. There was no Paris trip this time, but Charlie had never really cared much for Paris. There was no trip anywhere, although we offered to take him wherever he wanted to go. He said he was more content spending the summer at home, so we did, since it was what he wanted. He spent the summer swimming, reading and hanging out with his friends. He moved into the dorms in the middle of August, and for the first time in a very long time, Alice and I had an empty house.

It was strange. We’d gotten so used to having the kids around that we really didn’t know what to do with ourselves, which was somewhat amusing considering that we’d never really felt prepared to have kids anyway. Still, watching Alice as a mother for all those years was something I’m very glad I got to experience. It made her even more beautiful to me than she already had been, and that’s really saying something.

My health had remained stable the whole time the kids were growing up, and it was fine to this day, mostly because Alice was so damn serious about making sure it stayed that way. She took care of all of us, in her own way, and I really don’t think we could have been any better off. She and I still had the obvious fights, but nothing we couldn’t work out, and we were generally on good terms with each other and with the kids. While we traveled a lot for work, we tried to spend as much time at home as possible.