I let three years of pride sit between Eunice and me, and then Pastor Hill said she might not live through the week.

For forty years, Eunice sat beside me in the third pew on the left at Grace Baptist. We knew how to make room for each other without looking. She’d bring peppermints in the pocket of her coat, and I’d bring the hymnbook because hers always seemed to wander off.

Then we fell out. It was over something so small I can’t name it right without stopping to think.

A casserole dish, maybe. A word said wrong. Pride is a stubborn thing, especially when you dress it up as being right.

Three years ago, Eunice moved across the aisle. We still came every Sunday. We still sang the same hymns, about twenty feet apart, and acted like that was a reasonable way to live.

Last Sunday, Pastor Hill read the prayer list. I remember the little cough he gave before he started, the same one he always did when his throat was dry.

“Eunice Mercer, at County General, not expected to last the week.”

My hymnbook slid off my lap and hit the floor. It made a flat, wooden sound. I bent down to get it, then sat back up and didn’t hear much of the rest of the service.

I could see the right-side pew from where I sat. Her spot was empty.

I don’t mean I thought we’d never speak again. I just kept thinking there’d be a better Sunday.

A quieter time after church. A moment when we weren’t both embarrassed by how long we’d let this go. I’d told myself all kinds of things. None of them helped when Pastor Hill said she was at County General.

After the service, Toby found me by the coat hooks. He’s my grandson, and he was supposed to take me home.

“Grandma, you all right?”

“I need to go to the hospital.”

He didn’t ask why. He just took my coat and walked me to his car.

I was sixty-eight then, and Toby was old enough to drive but still young enough to keep a sleeve of crackers in the glove box. He offered me one on the way to County General. I said no, then asked for one five minutes later. I remember the cracker was broken into three pieces.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s okay.”

The hospital was only a short drive, but I kept looking at the streets as if I hadn’t been through town before.

The pharmacy, the little bakery that had changed hands twice, the church sign with Pastor Hill’s neat block letters. Every Sunday for three years, Eunice and I had sat in the same room and left without speaking.

Forty years of friendship, and I’d spent the last thirty-six months being careful not to cross an aisle.

Toby parked near the entrance. I sat with my hand on the door handle.

“What if she doesn’t want to see me?” I said.

“Then you’ll know you tried.”

I didn’t much like that answer. I wanted him to tell me she’d be happy I came. But he couldn’t know that, and I suppose I respected him for not pretending.

Room 214 was down a hall that smelled like floor cleaner and warm food. I saw Eunice through the little window in the door. She looked small beneath the white sheet. Her daughter, Martha, sat by the bed with a paper cup in her hand.

I almost turned around. I actually did take one step back. Then I thought about Eunice sitting alone in that pew across from me, and all the Sundays I’d let pass because I didn’t want to be the first one to say I was sorry.

So I knocked.

Martha opened the door. Her eyes looked tired. She’d been keeping watch, and I could tell she’d had more coffee than sleep.

“I’m sorry to come without calling,” I said.

“Oh, please come in,” she said. “Mom’s been asking about you.”

I stood there for a second. “She has?”

“Every week.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. Martha pulled the chair closer to the bed for me, then stepped out to call her brother. I was glad for the quiet, though I had nothing ready to say.

Eunice’s hand was resting on the blanket. The skin looked thin, with a bruise near the wrist where a needle had been. I touched her fingers. They were warm.

“Eunice,” I said.

Her eyes opened. She looked at me for a little while. Then her fingers closed around mine.

I couldn’t get a full breath for a moment, so I sat down and held on. The beeping machine kept its steady little sound. I had prepared a speech on the drive, though I hadn’t meant to. Most of it disappeared.

“You came,” she whispered.

“I should’ve come a long time ago.”

She moved her mouth like she was trying to smile. “Yes, you should’ve.”

That was Eunice. Even sick, she wasn’t going to make it easier than it was.

I started to cry, which annoyed me because I’d promised myself I wouldn’t make her comfort me. I wiped my face with the heel of my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was a fool, Eunice. I let three years steal forty.”

She squeezed my fingers again.

“I missed you every single Sunday,” she said.

“I missed you too.”

“I kept looking over.”

“I know. I saw you.”

We sat there holding hands. It sounds simple, and it was. That’s the part that gets me. I’d let the smallest thing become too big to step over, and all it took was sitting beside her and telling the truth.

Martha came back with two cups of coffee. She set one down by the bed and looked at our hands.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “Mom always asked if you were doing all right.”

I wanted to say I hadn’t known. I wanted to say I was sorry she’d had to ask. Instead, I said, “I should’ve checked on her.”

Martha nodded, not in a way that blamed me. She looked like someone who had been carrying too much for too long.

“She didn’t want to bother you,” she said. “She’d say, ‘She’s got her reasons.’”

I looked at Eunice. Her eyes had closed again, but her hand was still around mine.

There was no good excuse for how I’d acted after her husband died. I knew he’d been sick. I knew Eunice was having a hard time. I went to the funeral, hugged her, and said I’d come by soon.

I didn’t.

A week passed, then another. I told myself she probably wanted space. I was awkward around grief, and I knew that. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing, which felt safe to me and lonely to her.

The first Sunday after the funeral, Eunice brought a yellow CorningWare dish to the church potluck. It was one she’d used for years. She had made something with apples, I think. I remember the dish more clearly than what was inside it.

I took it home to wash because Eunice was tired, and I forgot to bring it back.

When she asked about it at church the next week, I was already feeling defensive. I’d been meaning to return it. I knew that. But she asked in front of two other women, and I heard accusation where there may not have been any.

“I said I’d bring it back,” I told her.

“I just asked if you still had it.”

“Well, you don’t have to keep after me.”

Her face changed. Not much. Just enough.

“I’m not keeping after you,” she said.

I should’ve stopped then. I should’ve seen how raw she was, how much she needed someone to be kind without making her ask twice. Instead, I had one more thing to say.

“You can’t expect everyone to know what you need.”

I can’t even tell you why I said it. I think I was uncomfortable with her grief and angry at myself for not knowing how to help. I made that her problem.

Eunice looked down at the table. “No,” she said. “I guess I can’t.”

She took the dish when I finally brought it to her the following Sunday. She thanked me. I said, “You’re welcome,” in a voice that made it sound like a chore.

Then she moved across the aisle.

For a while, I thought she was waiting for me to apologize. I was waiting for her to admit she’d made a fuss over a dish. We each had our own little case built up in our heads. The longer we carried them, the more foolish we felt, but it got harder to say so.

After three or four Sundays, I could have gone over to her pew. After three or four months, I told myself it would be awkward to make a big thing of it. After a year, I was ashamed of how long I’d waited. By the third year, I had managed to call my silence normal.

All the while, we were still there. Same hymns. Same service. Twenty feet apart.

Eunice drifted in and out of sleep while I stayed by her bed. I thought I’d have to leave when visiting hours ended, but Martha said she could arrange for me to stay. Eunice woke once and asked for water. She took one sip, then said, “That tastes like the church kitchen.”

“It does not,” I said.

“It’s that terrible tap water.”

I laughed. It came out shaky, but it was a laugh.

The next afternoon, I went back. Toby drove me again. He sat with me for a few minutes, then went to get lunch. I’d brought Eunice’s favorite peppermint candies from the church cupboard. I set one on the table, still wrapped.

She saw it when she opened her eyes.

“You brought me a mint.”

“I did.”

“You always did have them.”

“I still do.”

We talked in bits. About the church roof that leaked over the back pew. About her husband, Ray, and the way he used to leave his hat on the wrong hook. About our children growing up and moving away. We didn’t cover forty years in one afternoon. We didn’t need to. The memories were sitting right there with us.

Then she asked, “Did Martha tell you I kept looking for you?”

“She did.”

“I thought maybe you’d come over.”

“I thought maybe you wanted me to stay away.”

“I didn’t.”

I lowered my eyes to our hands. “I know that now.”

Martha came in carrying Eunice’s Bible. She had found it tucked near the bed and was shifting things around to make room for a fresh cup of water. A folded church bulletin slipped out and landed on the blanket.

“Mom’s had this in there for ages,” Martha said. “I think it’s from the Sunday you two had that argument.”

I picked it up. The paper had gone soft at the folds, and the corner was worn from being handled. I opened it carefully.

It was dated three years earlier, the Sunday of the potluck.

There was writing in the margin. Eunice’s writing. Small and faint, but I could read it.

I’m sorry I was sharp with you. I miss my side of the pew.

I read it once. Then again.

The bulletin trembled in my fingers. I placed it between our clasped hands.

“I miss my side of the pew too,” I said.

Eunice’s eyes were open. She looked at the paper, then at me.

“I wrote that before church,” she whispered. “I was going to give it to you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

She let out a breath. “I got scared.”

“So did I.”

“I thought you were mad about the dish.”

“I was mad at myself. I just took it out on you.”

She turned her face toward me, and there were tears at the corner of her eye. I didn’t try to wipe them away. I held her hand and let the bulletin rest between us.

“I’m sorry I left you alone after Ray died,” I said. “I was clumsy and I was proud. I knew better.”

“I was lonely,” she said. “And I was mean about that dish.”

“It was just a dish.”

“It was a good dish.”

That made us both smile. It was a little smile, but it was ours.

Martha sat on the other side of the bed, and I could see the relief in her face. She had been trying to keep things steady for her mother. Now she didn’t have to watch us pretend we were strangers.

“You two were always together,” she said.

“Not always,” I told her. “We had three years where we were idiots.”

Eunice’s fingers tightened around mine. “You were the idiot.”

“I was.”

“No, we both were.”

That evening, Toby came back to pick me up. I told him I wanted to stay. He looked at Martha, and she said there was room for me in the chair.

“Call me if you need anything,” Toby said.

“I will.”

I stayed through the night. Eunice slept a lot. When she woke, I sang the hymns we knew, quiet enough not to bother the nurses. I got the words wrong once, and she squeezed my hand.

“You always skip that line,” she whispered.

“I do not.”

“You do.”

I sang it right the next time.

At some point, the room grew quiet except for the small sounds of the equipment. Martha had dozed in her chair. I held Eunice’s hand and watched the bulletin resting near our fingers. I thought about all those Sundays when we’d been close enough to hear each other sing and too stubborn to say a thing.

Eunice woke once more before morning. Her eyes found mine.

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

“I’m glad I came too.”

She closed her eyes. Her hand stayed in mine.

Eunice died early Tuesday morning, with Martha on one side and me on the other. The room was quiet. I won’t dress it up. She was gone, and I sat there with her hand in mine until Martha was ready to let go.

At the memorial, I sat with the family. Martha held my arm as we walked in. I didn’t sit across the aisle from Eunice’s children like I was a visitor. I sat beside them, where I belonged.

The following Sunday, I went back to Grace Baptist. The right-side pew was empty. I walked to the third pew on the left and sat in my old place. The wooden seat beside me felt wider than it used to.

I set my open hymnal on my lap. Then I put one hand on the empty seat, where an unpeeled peppermint rested in the warm morning sun. I left it there.