Relief, Relief

She’d heated the ham in the fellowship hall that morning. It had been that blue time of the morning, and the swamp in front of the church was still chirping with frogs. She had let herself into the side door of the church—it was a vinyl-sided building built like a barn, all white except for its stark black roof and black faux shutters. It was still cool and a slight fog raised off the swamp. The hog farm across the highway hadn’t started to stink yet.

Now folks were walking into the communion hall and grabbing what they wanted from the tables. Sue had a Styrofoam plate of ham, mashed potatoes, green beans boiled and soaked in bacon grease, fried sweet potatoes, and two slices of Heiner’s white bread. Her ham was cut to the bone already and folks were moving on to the re-heated Kentucky Fried Chicken.

She sat on an aluminum folding chair and felt old. Well, not old, she reconsidered. Oldish. Well…no. Old. She was old, she decided. She was old and her mother was older, and the rest of her family was dead or had moved and she was old. But the church was still here and she could bake a good ham. And Easter was a time of salvation and renewal.

Sue picked at each piece of the meal, tasting and considering. Her ham was good, she knew that. The sweet potatoes could have been browned a bit more. Maybe a touch more brown sugar. The green beans were cooked to mush, but that was how it should be—the grease carried that.

“Lot of dessert up there,” Howard said. He was standing on her left. He wasn’t sure when he got there. “I made your sister’s dump-cake.”

She looked up at him from her chair and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. The plate of food was perched on her crossed legs. “You know, I never cared for it. It’s too sweet. And the coconut.” She looked back to her plate and took another fork of the potatoes. They were lumpy and could use more salt. You could taste how she used milk instead of cream. Thelma had done a poor job of it.

“It’s still awful sweet, but I cut the coconut.” he said. He was holding his plate in one hand and had small red Solo cup and fork in the other. “I never cared for it either.”

“How’s the chicken?” Sue asked.

“Not half as good as your ham.” He grinned at her and shook a cold chicken leg. He was still tall, still had that pencil thin mustache, and his hair was still black. “I snuck a bit during the sermon.”

That color can’t be real, Sue thought. She softened then, thinking of her own yellow hair and how many boxes of dye she had gone through to get the color she was born with.

He’d lost some hair, too, in the fifty years since high school: his widow’s peak was deeper than ever. He’d gained some weight, too (hadn’t we all, she thought); he moved a bit slower than he did when she had been a cheerleader for the basketball team he played on. She remembered that he had even played sometimes.

“Be careful that the preacher don’t see you sneaking off. You’re a deacon,” she said and laughed.

Coach Whitley had been so tough on the basketball team. Running them up and down the hill outside the school every afternoon before practice. Whitley had coached her son, Travis, for a season. Then Travis had died. Her boy.

The thought had pulled into her mind. You’d think those vacuum-spaces of memory and grief would be easier as years passed. Nearly forty years now. But they came so unexpectedly and they came with so much force that they always sucked the air out of her lungs. No, squeezed it out of you.

Whitley had been old back when her son had played, she thought. Your age now, she thought. Old and dead. The fork in her hand trembled and she stabbed at another bite of the mushy green beans. His age, his death, her boy’s death, was like watching house lights going out one at time. Her own lights would be flipped out not too awful long from now.

“I’ll just bring him a slice of pie next time he’s at the old folks home,” Howard said.

“You gonna feed the preacher a piece of cafeteria pie?”

Howard laughed, and pointed with the chicken leg, “Now, no. I can bake. I bake for all the old ladies in the home. I can make a pie as good as my momma’s. Daddy said it was better, but I don’t believe it.”

It was funny: fifty years later, fifty-three years, really, since high school, and Howard was still mostly Howard. And he was still handsome. Handsome for an old man, anyway.

■■■

“Cook for your own damn self then,” Sue said. “I ain’t gonna cook again after cooking for the church. You always have liked fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I can’t help it if it don’t taste good right now.”

Leonard’s legs were weeping through the bandages she had wrapped his feet with. The seep-stained the chair where he sat.

Leonard looked up at her from his recliner. He was a big man. Heavy and trunk-armed. He still had his head of light hair and his bushy yellow beard was streaked with grey.

He’d been so pretty when she’d met him up north. 1972. He had been smoking Pall Malls and playing pool in Defiance, Ohio. She had been singing then. Her band, The Love Strucks, had done two nights there. It was a good place to play—a lot of family had moved there to work in the factories. Those were good shows. They’d opened for The Amazing Rhythm Aces, three years before they got big. The Love Strucks had almost made it. Almost.

“I can’t taste for shit,” he said. He closed the legs on his recliner and tried to stand up. His weeping, split feet held him there. It was obvious it hurt and he tottered. “Bring me my boots,” he said.

“Fine,” she said. She went and got his steel-toe boots. She would have called them work boots except that he didn’t work anymore. “Where are you going anyway? It’s Easter Sunday. Nothing is open. And whatever would be open is closed for Covid.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “I’m going to Portsmouth. The river helps me breathe. I feel like I can’t breathe in here and my feet feel like they want to burst.”

“You’re crazy. If you catch it, it’ll kill you. You can breathe just fine if you’d take your medicine. And your feet are swole up because of your sugar. Just stay, Lenny. The river is thirty minutes away. You can barely stand. Take your medicine, eat some chicken and stay home.”

He lumbered towards the door. He had to navigate through the kitchen, into the utility room, and then outside down the steps. She was not going to help.

“I’ll eat dinner on the way,” he said.

She sat down at the table and ate the dump-cake Howard had scooped for her. Better than her dead sister’s recipe, she thought. She could hear Leonard groan and cuss with every step. Part of her hoped he’d fall. Part of her hoped he’d make it to his truck and then just keep driving. That’s a good recipe, she thought. A lot less sweet than her sister’s. Fresh cherries too. Not the sickly-sweet cherry filling her sister had always bought from the Amish.

Her sister, Teri, had been younger than her, and had been just a kid when The Love Strucks toured. Sue had taken her to as many shows as she could. Sue had even brought her to Defiance for that weekend, the weekend she met Leonard. Sue had been twenty-two. Teri just eighteen.

Yeah, those had been some good days. She remembered Teri getting drunk off Old Milwaukee beer that some old creep had bought her, and how she had thrown up in the bathroom of that bar. What was that bar’s name they had been in? After the second night he’d helped them pack up their equipment into their van. He carried the amps like they were nothing. He’d been so strong then. She’d invited him back to the hotel that night and had sent Teri off to the drummer’s room for the night. Leonard had been so handsome with his funny northern accent. She thought he’d been like a Viking. Two days later he found them in Toledo and watched for a few days there. Then he just kind of…stuck. Like a roadie. He’d sit in the audience and cheer when she sung. She sent Teri home and Leonard took her spot in the room.

And then Sue was in love.

And then she was pregnant.

And then she’d come home and he’d stuck here, too. She knew he hated it here. But that wasn’t her fault and this was her home. So, when she had a baby, she came home. It had been the right thing. For her, at least. And they’d raised Travis the best they could while he’d lived.

She stood and walked to the kitchen sink. She could see him out the window as he walked to his truck. When had she started to hate him? He’d turned so bitter. Cruel. And then he’d gotten sick with the sugar. And you’d think that a person would be grateful for help, but it had only made him worse. Travis had gone. And Lenny had hit her some.

No, she hoped he’d fall. Hoped that he’d drive that car right off the road in Portsmouth and into the river.

She said a quick prayer, asking God to forgive her for that thought. But a part of her still liked to watch him struggle across the gravel drive. 

■■■

Howard always asked her to come out with the rest of the choir, but she always said no. But, for whatever reason, this time when he’d asked during Wednesday night Bible study and choir practice, she had, for some reason, said yes.

Now she was in a bar and grill in Jackson watching folks take turns singing karaoke. She nursed a beer and watched them sing.

Most of the choir hadn’t come this week—just her and Howard and Thelma Lou. But she knew the rest of the folks singing. She’d gone to school with some, saw some of them grow up. Patty Stapleton had sung a Shania Twain song. Howard and Doug Adkins (who Howard was still buddies with from high school) had sung together on “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” They couldn’t hit the high notes but no one cared. The crowd had laughed and cheered as they plowed their way through the song. Thelma Lou, the only other member of the choir, had sung a Willie Nelson song.

“When are you gonna get up there, Sue?” Thelma Lou asked her. She had a halo of salt-and-pepper perm framing her face and bifocals. She was drinking a bright pink wine cooler.

Sue finished her beer and wished for a cigarette. It had been twenty years since she quit (a fiftieth birthday present to herself), but she still felt the pull of it sometimes. At a bar, drinking a beer, listening to folks sing, this was a moment when the pull was strong. “I don’t know—I don’t mind singing in churches, but I’ve never sung karaoke before.”

“But it ain’t like you’ve never sung in a bar,” Howard said. “Did you know Sue almost made it big? Right after high school. She was in that band and toured all over the state.”

“West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky, too.” Sue wanted another beer. “But who’s counting,” she laughed.

“Oh yeah, she was gonna be big time. She was great on stage. Like Blondie and Dolly Parton put together.”

“What kind of music did you all play?” Thelma Lou asked, leaning forward, adjusting her bifocals. She had graduated six or seven years after Sue and Howard.

Howard answered for her. “Southern Rock. Kinda like the Eagles or Skynyrd. Better, if you ask me.”

“Oh my,” Thelma Lou said. “Were you ever on the radio?” She sat her empty bottle down on the table.

Sue could feel herself smiling. This was nice. “A few times. We pressed a record and stations would play before we played in their towns. No official fan clubs.”

“I still have that record,” Howard said. “I don’t have a player anymore, but I still have all my old records. I know for a fact that yours is good.”

Sue could feel herself blushing. She covered her face with her hands, “Lord, that’s embarrassing.”

“Now, no. You were really good. It’s a good record.” There was a pause in the noise of the bar as a singer stopped to a smattering of applause.

“Isn’t that something,” Thelma Lou said. “I’d never have guessed. You never sing nothing but harmony at church.”

Is that so, Sue wondered. Why didn’t she ever take any of the solos. Her voice was still strong and true. And maybe it was the beer, but she felt Thelma Lou didn’t believe her.

“Howard, would you get me another beer?” She started to reach for her purse but he waved her off.

“I tell you what: You go sign up and I’ll buy you and Thelma both another drink.”

“I don’t know,” Sue said.

“Jesus turned the water into wine, not milk, Sue,” Thelma said. “He wanted happy Christians. Just not drunk ones. I’ll have one more, but I do have to work tomorrow. High school seniors can sniff out a hungover math teacher.”

Still not retired, thought Sue. That was one thing Sue didn’t mind about getting older—the freedom over your days that just fell on you when you retired.

Freedom, she thought. That wasn’t quite what she felt. She wasn’t not free, but she wasn’t really free either. When was the last time she felt free? The band, of course. Just a few years of real openness, living hand-to-mouth (or voice-to-mouth, really), not quite sure where you were going to sleep. Or with who. And then Leonard. And then Travis. And then all the mess after that. It was like a series of doors and windows that looked out on possibility and inwards to different forms of herself had blown shut in the steady wind of hours, and days. Small decisions that led to big difference and doors slamming soundly shut forever on all the things that could have been. Years and decades of choices that were not, wholly, what she wanted. And the shitter was, she thought, that they’d been the right decisions.

“I’ll take a Jack and Coke, Howie,” she said. Let’s make a bad decision, then.

■■■

She woke up the next morning with cottonmouth and a headache that seem to start at the bridge of her nose and blossom out from there to cover her entire skull. Even her ears hurt. She hadn’t been properly hungover in twenty years and the difference in the memory of that hangover (a Fourth of July party where one of her sister’s college-aged sons had brought home a new drinking game that everybody had to try), and the feeling of this one were stark. That one had been bad. This one was something else. And her throat hurt. She coughed as she came fully awake, grateful that she had left a glass of water on the coffee table.

She looked around her small living room. A couch, a recliner, a coffee table. A book shelf with just knick-knacks and a picture of Travis at eighth-grade graduation. Goddamn it, she thought. All of it old and worn. She coughed again and took a drink of the water. Her throat definitely hurt. She coughed again and wiped at her nose.

“Lenny, you awake?” she called out. She had her shoes off. “I’m sick.”

“Hungover,” he called from their bedroom. Well, the bedroom. She’d slept in Travis’s old room for the past ten years. “You have fun?” he asked—an accusation. His voice was raspy. He sneezed.

“I did. A lot,” she said. Maybe she was still a bit drunk.

She’d started with the one Jack and Coke. Then she’d had a rum and coke. And then, a whiskey sour. That had always been her favorite. She remembered singing. She did the same song as Howard, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” but she’d sung it well enough that people had applauded. And then she’d sung some Patsy Cline. There had been cheers for that. And then she and Howard had sung “Islands in the Stream.” His voice had been bad, flat, but it was fun, and she’d clung to his neck in a hug afterwards. And she’d smelled his aftershave on his smooth face and she remembered wondering if he had shaved that evening for her. And then he and Thelma must have brought her home.

“Well, you must’ve brought something home with you, because I’m sick too,” he said.

“Or you brought it in from Portsmouth.”

“I’m always by myself, outside, down there. You did this, you bitch.” He broke out into a series of coughs, long and rattling, and then moaned.

She walked from the couch, unsteady on her feet. She was still wearing her shoes. They must have dropped her off at the door or just inside it. Maybe she had brought it with her, she thought. Maybe it was from the church. She went to the door of his room.

“I’m allowed to go out. And you need to take care of yourself sometimes,” she said. She could smell the sickness on him, and she could smell where he hadn’t changed his wrappings on his feet. “Have you eat yet?”

“Not since before you left for Wednesday services. I didn’t feel good so I stayed in bed.” His big body looked blue in the morning light. The bed sheets and blankets were wadded up around his groin like a loincloth. His body was still impressive: solid as an oak stump, still yet, she thought. But hollow now.

“You were sick yesterday? You knew you were sick and you let me go out?

“I just thought it was my allergies. Just…worse.”

“You knew. You son of a bitch. You knew. And you let me go out there.”

“We don’t know and you’re sick too. You brought it to me. I didn’t do this. You did. All this. All this is your fault. All of it.”

He was staring at her—through her. His beard was flecked with spit. His pale and blue chest had turned pink in his rage. “Every bit of it. From Travis on this has been your fault. And now you’re gonna kill me too, just like you did him.”

She had always been frightened of Leonard. He was a big man, both inside and out. He could be tender, an endless well of love and care, and it had always felt so good to drink from that well. Not the well of eternal life that the Bible promised, but something close. But there was also the other side of that. The wild anger and violence. Both she and Travis had faced that too much. It was as if her body was being torn in half as she looked at him. She could feel the push and pull of the man, of his love and his anger, the weight of the time blowing open doors closed and the sounds those doors made as they slammed. She felt her own body and face redden with sudden anger, and she was racked by a sudden cough. And then she saw him in the bed, clearly.

The light came through the window in slants. Dust motes spun in the stale air. He was breathing heavy and there was still saliva in the blonde and grey strips of his beard. She could see his teeth. Small, she saw now, clearly, the cloud of closeness and time stripped away. Tiny teeth in a small round mouth. The wild hair of his head and the heaviness of his body, the fear that they brought, were stripped away and she saw him clearly. Just a child in that bed. Raging against his choices. The beard, she saw was ridiculous, almost a glued on thing. His teeth were milk-teeth. A child crying out in the dark. She did not feel pity.

“I didn’t kill our boy. I bought him a car. And that was a good thing for a sixteen-year-old boy to have. He died. The truck hit his car and he died. We fought, he got mad, he drove off too fast. And then he died. People just die.” The words were heavy as they came out. Heavy and slow and they sunk into the room and into Sue’s heart. A weight was not lifted; instead the feeling of a stone weight falling into place.

“No, you killed him. And now you’re gonna kill me,” he said from the bed. Sue thought he might be crying.

“No, Lenny. I’m not going to kill you. I promise.” She walked to him and kissed his forehead, feeling nothing but the heat on her lips from his fever and the coolness that seemed to radiate from her own insides. “You’re burning up. Let me get you some water and I’ll make some breakfast. Something light. Feed a cold, starve a fever…give a snack to Covid?”

■■■

She felt bad that first day, but she had been able to take care of herself and help Leonard as best she could. The second day, they had gone to the hospital. They had been sent home. Sue with prescription cough syrup and Leonard with antiviral medication.

The three days after that, things were bad.

The second day she ate some, cooked a bit, but she was feverish and coughing hard enough to see stars. She was
still able to make food for herself and Leonard. She took the bandages off of his feet and changed them, but poorly. He had gone to his recliner in the little living room and stayed there. The living room, between the kitchen and the bathroom, was a good spot so that he didn’t have to walk as far to the bathroom. But the bandages bled onto the foot-rest of his chair.

The third day was worse still. She didn’t cook but she was able to get ice water and Tylenol for them both. And Leonard’s antivirals. Leonard wasn’t raving, but he wasn’t always making sense then, either, and he would not take his medicine.

“I just need to breathe,” he said. “If I can just get to the river. If I can just get to the water, I can breathe.” He’d wrapped his feet on his own in towels, but too loosely. They were old and ratty towels, from when even Travis was still alive. The seams in the towels were ripped and stray strings clung to the thickened blood and blister-water, like seaweed left by the tide.

“You need to take your medicine, Leonard,” she said. “If not, I’ll need to call the emergency squad to come get you.” She hadn’t known what time it was when she had got water and had gone to the bathroom.

His eyes hadn’t cleared, but he said in a raspy, strangling voice, “If you call the squad, I’ll never get out of there alive.”

“Okay, Lenny,” she had said.

The fourth day she did not leave her bed, but slept and dreamt of Travis. He was so very small in the dream; it was his second birthday—and he had a small trampoline to jump on. He held the bar that attached to it (she had bought it, Leonard had put it together). There were streamers in the corners and cake on the table. Teri was there.

“Watch me, momma! I hop and hop and hop and hop, bunny, bunny, bunny!” His brown hair had been long—they still hadn’t given his first haircut.

And then his head had started to weep like the wounds on Leonard’s feet. But he didn’t notice. He smiled and jumped. And then Leonard had stepped to her. Big, strong, young, Leonard. “This is your fault,” Leonard said. His hands were weeping and bleeding and he picked the boy up.

Travis began to scream. And so did she.

■■■

She woke herself up with her screaming the morning of the fifth day with the sheets in her dead son’s room wrapped tightly around her.

One eye was crusted shut, but the one that could open saw that late-morning light was coming through the window blinds. She was hungry, in an irrationally strong way.

“Lenny! You out there?”

She struggled to her feet and teetered through the small room and narrow doorway. She looked into the living room towards where Leonard should be sitting.

The dream had been awful, but the silence of her home was more awful still.

He wasn’t there. His cellophane pack of antivirals were next to his recliner. None had been taken since the two she had given him before she had gone into the dark.

“You didn’t take your medicine, Lenny,” she said. She walked past his empty chair, finding strength now in a surge of anger. “Won’t even give yourself medicine. You’d drown in the rain,” she said and shuffled to the kitchen.

Beans and cornbread, she thought. That’d be good. She should make that. Sausage and kraut too. She started to pull eggs and milk from the refrigerator before she realized she wasn’t thinking straight. I can’t cook, she realized. I need water and to sit. And then food. She left the eggs and milk on the counter and tottered back into the living room. She heard the awful silence again and finally her thoughts fell into place. Lenny was missing.

She went back to the kitchen, glanced at the milk and eggs she’d left on the counter and started to put them away. She picked up an egg and the milk jug before realizing again: Lenny was missing. She went from room to room, still holding the egg and milk in her hands. Every room was empty. She went back to the kitchen and looked from the window above the sink into the driveway. And there he was, lying in the gravel, his truck door open, and him in front of it.

She went barefoot into the spring sunshine, carrying the milk and the single egg. It had rained during the night and the world smelled wet and ripe. The gravel hurt her feet and she had a memory of running on gravel in bare feet. Teri and her, out to meet their daddy after he came home from the foundry. The iron dust was ground into his skin.

She came to Leonard and stood by him. His feet were still wrapped loosely in the towels. They seemed to be attached by only the crust of the dried weeping. He was breathing, but quick and shallow. His eyes were open but they did not focus on her as she looked down. He held his truck keys in his hand but the interior lights of the truck were off. Battery must be dead, Sue thought. He’s been out here all night then, at least.

“You did it this time, Lenny.” She thought about trying to move him inside, but his size and her age and health made it impossible. She squeezed the egg gently in her hand, feeling the damp and cool shell in her palm. And, if she were honest, she did not want to move him. “I won’t call the squad,” she said, and walked back in the house.

She made herself lunch, scrambled eggs, and then went back to bed. She did not dream.

■■■

She was awakened by a pounding and shouting at the front door. It was dark in the house and there was no way to tell the time. As she moved towards the door, she became awake enough to recognize the voice—it was Howard and he was frantic.

“Sue, are you okay? I called the squad. They’re on their way. Answer me, Sue, if you’re in there!” She could see the door rattling and the knob twisting as he tried to get in.

“I’m coming,” she yelled, surprised at how weak her voice sounded.

She opened the door to Howard in a mask. He was in a suit and tie. It must be Sunday, she realized. Church night. He looked nice. Behind him, laid out neatly on the grass was Leonard. Howard had moved him from the rocks.

“The squad is coming,” he said.

“Is that Leonard?”

“I found him laying out in the driveway.”

“Is he dead?”

Howard’s brow tightened and he glanced at Leonard, then at her and then at the ground. Then, in quiet and even words he said, “I don’t know. His breathing is real weak.” He was lying to spare her, she realized. The lightning bugs were out and flashing. Tree frogs were screaming at the wood line.

They stood in silence with the dead man just behind them, the porch light casting them both in a thin yellow light. Sue noticed his eyes were closed. She wondered if Howard had done it, but she didn’t ask him.

“Do you want to pray?” Howard asked.

“No,” Sue said. “No, I don’t think I do.” She could hear sirens coming. Howard took her hands and began to pray on his own.

■■■

The hardest part had been calling Leonard’s family, what was left of them, in Defiance. Only his sister came down.
He hadn’t wanted a big ceremony—a closed casket, a simple graveside prayer, and that was it. Everybody had to wear a mask. Most of the church turned out to support her, which was nice, but she didn’t need them. Howard did not come. It didn’t bother her. Even if they hadn’t said it to each other, it would have been awkward and unfair. It was just another thing that marked him as a good man. He knew when to stay away.

There was a time when being widowed at her age would have meant three days of visitors and dozens of family members in her home. But those were long-gone days. When Travis was buried it had been nearly a week. Teri had put most of them in her house. But all that was gone. Shut down, like a crate hammered shut.

After the funeral she went home alone. She spent the days following Leonard’s death cleaning. She scrubbed all the hard surfaces in her home. She rented a carpet cleaner and cleaned all the carpets and the furniture. She spent nearly an hour on Leonard’s recliner, cleaning where his feet had wept onto it. I’ll throw that out soon, she thought. And now there was nothing to do. Nothing to clean, nothing to cook, nothing to do. So she sat down.

She sat in her kitchen and looked out the window to where she had left him. The ripped vinyl of her chair poked at her thighs. Her dress was uncomfortable and she pulled off her mask. She’d left him. She could change out of these clothes, she thought, but she didn’t want to.

The record Howard had brought by was on the table. She looked at the cover and ran a sharp fingernail along the edge of it. She missed that band. She wondered if she could start a band now. She thought about the days touring and the van and the chaos. She couldn’t do that, but she could sing cover songs. She could piece something together.

She stared at the cover. There she was. She was so pretty, she thought. Dolly and Blondie all at once, that’s what Howard had said. There was a coffee stain on the kick drum. Howard must have done that, she thought. But when? It didn’t matter. She knew she shouldn’t, but she missed Howard and wanted to call him.

She took the record and went to her stereo. She had to fiddle with the speakers before she got it to play. At first the record was spinning at seventy-eight and her voice came out as high and whiny. But then she set it to the proper speed. Lord, she sounded young. How could that have been me, she wondered. How was that voice ever me? But it was. And she knew it was her, and a part of her leapt at the recognition of herself. So much dust and weight and cobwebs. But there she was. Barefoot in the gravel, singing a song as her daddy came home with the iron in his pores. She hugged her arms to herself and rocked herself back and forth in the sound of her own voice.

When the knock came at her door she had just flipped the record to the B-side. Six more songs out of the past, still true and real. She knew it would be Howard before she got to the door. And sure enough, there he was. He was wearing a light blue T-shirt and jeans. He was holding a brown paper bag in one hand.

“I was gonna call you,” she said, lying. But it wasn’t much of a lie, she realized; she had wanted to.

“I have the stuff for a whiskey sour if you want a drink.”

“I do.” The sound of her younger voice came from the living room, singing and crying about young love and young pain, a voice still empty of regret and mourning, a voice still full. ■