"She's not visiting anymore," Margaret said. "You know that."
"I know that."
"Good. Don't mess it up with nobility. Nobility is how you stayed lonely."
Walt kissed his sister's cheek. "I'm retiring nobility. It didn't pay well."
There were evenings when the past sat down between them at the table like an uninvited relative. Walt would go quiet mid-sentence, eyes on a spot on the wall where a calendar had hung the year Eleanor died. Ruth would wait, or touch his wrist, or sometimes say, "Tell me where you went," and he would tell her—not always with words that made sense, but with enough honesty that the relative at the table became less a ghost and more a memory with manners. Ruth had her own visits from the past: a call from the almost-husband in Denver that left her pacing the yard; a letter from her mother that managed to congratulate and criticize in the same paragraph. Walt listened. He did not fix. He handed coffee and presence and the occasional dry joke that let her breathe again.