Miles didn’t cry when the nurse took Arthur’s bed away; the silence did it for him, thick and bright and mean as hospital light. He sat too straight in the vinyl chair, shoes swinging over the scuffed linoleum, fingers locked around the little white pawn like it was the last solid thing left. I watched his jaw work, a child trying to swallow a grown man’s grief, and when he finally whispered, “He didn’t finish teaching me how to lose, Mom,” I realized I had no idea how to answer, no script, no comforting cliché, only the sharp, echoing awareness that Arthur had left us in the middle of a les… Continues…
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