At six on Sundays, Hannah called her father. At six twelve, she usually ran out of things to say. He reported the weather, the garden, and the price of petrol. She described work in terms broad enough to avoid explaining it. Then they agreed they should talk longer next time.
After her mother died, Hannah had expected them to become closer. Grief, she discovered, did not automatically teach two people how to speak. Her mother had supplied the connecting tissue for years: Tell Dad about the interview. Ask Hannah about the cat. Without her, the conversation had gaps neither knew how to cross.
One Sunday, Hannah heard a television in the background and felt suddenly angry. She had set aside time. She had put away her laptop. Couldn't he at least turn down the sound?
“Are you watching something?” she asked.
“Just the news.”
“We can talk another time.”
“No, it's fine.”
It wasn't fine. She ended the call early and spent the evening rehearsing evidence that she cared more than he did. The evidence was persuasive until she remembered the freezer he had filled before her surgery, and the six-hour drive he had made when her car broke down. Her father was not absent. He was difficult to hear in the language she preferred.
The next week, she asked about the tomato plants. He explained a problem with their leaves in more detail than she expected. She listened, then admitted she had killed a basil plant in less than a fortnight. He offered advice. Some of it might even have saved the basil if it had been alive to receive it.
Later she said, “I miss talking about things that aren't practical.”
He was quiet. The television went silent.
“Your mother was good at that,” he said.
“She was.”
“I don't always know what to ask.”
Hannah sat on the kitchen floor because the chair was covered in laundry. She told him that she didn't always know either. For a few minutes, the lack of skill was something they shared rather than a fault she assigned to him.
They began trying different things. Sometimes she called while walking, which made silences less conspicuous. Sometimes he sent a photograph of the garden during the week, giving them a subject already in progress. Once she asked what her mother had been like when they first met, and he talked until the battery warning sounded.
Not every call improved. He still interrupted with practical solutions when she wanted sympathy. She learned to say, “Could you just listen to this part?” He learned, not perfectly, to ask before offering advice. They were both old enough to have habits and not too old to notice them.
Hannah's prayers changed a little. She stopped asking God to make her father easier and began asking for enough patience to meet the person he actually was. She also kept saying what she needed. Love did not require becoming satisfied with silence when a real conversation was possible.
On a Sunday in May, her father called at five fifty-seven. She answered with wet hands, halfway through the dishes.
“I haven't got much news,” he said.
“Neither have I.”
“I thought we could talk anyway.”
She put the plate down and reached for a towel.
