Simone nodded immediately. "I'll go."
"I choose the counselor. You don't get to curate the room where we tell the truth."
"Agreed."
They began with Dr. Patricia Okonkwo in a low brick building near SouthPark, a Black woman in her fifties with gray at the temples and a voice that did not flatter. The first session Aaron spoke in clipped inventories. Simone spoke in apologies that Dr. Okonkwo interrupted.
"I don't need you to perform remorse for him in my office," the counselor said. "I need you to describe what you did and what you wanted when you did it. Remorse without accuracy is just another costume."
Simone described. Aaron listened. Sometimes he left the session and sat in the parking lot with the engine off until his hands stopped shaking. Sometimes he drove home and played Candy Land with Lily as if board games were a technology for remaining human.
December came. Lily's school winter concert. Aaron and Simone sat in the same row without touching. Lily sang with her class in a red sweater, two puffs decorated with tiny silver clips Simone had fought into place that morning while Aaron made oatmeal. Afterward Lily ran to both of them and hugged both of them and said, "Did you see me," and they both said yes, and for ten minutes in the crowded cafeteria with cookie tables and construction-paper snowflakes, Aaron felt the ghost of the family they had been and hated how much he still wanted it.
Christmas morning Lily opened presents with the ferocity of the well-loved. Aaron had bought her a science kit. Simone had bought her a purple bike helmet to match the backpack era. They cooked together because the alternative was letting the day become a monument to what was broken. In the afternoon Aaron's sister arrived from Atlanta with gifts and a careful face. She hugged Aaron hard in the kitchen and whispered, "You look thinner," and he whispered back, "I know," and then they both went out to watch Lily ride a scooter in the driveway until the early dark.