After months of not being able to be in the same room together, due to mutual fury and recrimination, my sister-in-law and I met for a walk on the beach. Separate cars. She was on time, I arrived late, a reversal of our usual pattern that possibly boded well. How to start? Should we look for shells? The sand dollars that occasionally get washed up on this shore? We took our shoes off and walked on the wet sand. She commented on the kelp. I noted the driftwood. Higher up on the beach was a withered man in a wheelchair who called out to passersby, “Money for service in Vietnam?” Phrasing it as a question. “Didn’t the government already pay you?” Such was my silent response, as we walked by without pausing.

My sister broke our silence by asking, “Did it melt your heart to see him?”

“A little,” I replied, grateful to her for making that sentiment, on my part, true in retrospect.

Because I often do feel things later, sometimes quite intensely, that I fail to feel in the moment. Call me slow and deliberate. In conversation with someone I love (I do love my sister-in-law, very much), a feeling will return. Something on the verge of being forgotten will become manifest, like bubbles in a simmering pot of soup. It had been cooking, the flavors concentrating.

I saw, but did not mention, a dead jellyfish.

“I’m sorry,” I said, without elaborating.

“I forgive you,” said my sister-in-law.