The first part of our reunion was a huge fancy dinner thing. There was a cocktail hour before that but Julie and I were still at my parent's house picking up Ava as she had spent the whole day with them. It was better to take Ava with us because people are so attracted to little kids that we didn't have to say much other than answer questions about Ava. I had never been more relieved to not talk about myself.

It was surprisingly nice to hear about my former classmate's lives. Jaclyn and Mateo had gotten married (apparently the fact that they both decided to go to Florida for college brought them together, they were surprisingly cute) and Lizzy was engaged to an equally intelligent and scattered guy. We were both relieved to see that crazy Ella had not shown up (she totally had the trademarks of the kind of person who'd come to a reunion strictly to hook up with people) and everyone else who was planning to act crazy happily stayed away.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay through the entire dinner. I left before they served dessert and took Ava back to my parent's house so she could go to bed. Julie was supposed to come back with us but she wanted to catch up with her friends some more so we decided that I'd just come back and pick her up later.

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"Why don't you ever talk about Mom?"

"Um, what?"

"You never talk about Mom. Why?"

"I, uh, guess I just figured that you didn't want to talk about her."

"I'm okay with talking about her."

"All right. Then... let's talk about her."

"Okay."

"Um, what do you want to talk about?"

"How did she die?"

"..."

"Daddy?"

"..."

"Did you hear me?"

"Ava, sweet pea, do we have to talk about that first? You're still very young."

"I don't think anyone is too young to know about what happened to their mother."

"Are you sure you're still a little kid?"

"I don't know."

"You've been spending too much time with Julie."

"Fine. Where did you meet her?"

"In a supermarket. She started making fun of me the second she started talking."

"That sounds like her."

"It does, doesn't it."

"Do you miss her?"

"Of course I do."

"I miss her."

"I'm not surprised."

"Do you think you'll always miss her?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Do you think I'll always miss her?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. But it's not a bad thing to miss someone."

"I know."

"Was this a good first talk about your mom?"

"Yes, it was very nice."