The Sick Room

She opens the bedroom door, quietly. She doesn’t want to disturb the two people inside. She needn’t have worried. Her father-in-law and her son are utterly engrossed in the story being told. The older man reads from the book open in front of him. Her son, still dressed in his pajamas because he’s recuperating from being sick, sits forward on the bed, mouth slightly open in intense concentration.

She smiles to herself. She had almost hesitated asking the boy’s grandfather to come. But this was the story her husband heard when he was sick. Now it was his son’s turn.