Aaron took her hand. Deep brown against warm brown. Wedding bands catching the late light.
"I am not deciding that today," he said. "Today I am standing in a courtyard where our life cracked, and I am telling the crack it does not get to be the whole house."
They stood until the light shifted. Then they walked back to the car. No teacher. No clipboard. No seven-year-old with a purple backpack — she was eight now, elsewhere, safe, loved, still asking questions that would grow as she grew. The sedan smelled faintly of the science kit Lily had left in the back seat. Aaron drove. Simone sat beside him. Charlotte moved around them in its ordinary busy mercy: suburban streets, early evening, the particular peace of a Saturday that had been asked to hold a memorial and had held it without spectacle.
That night Aaron moved through the bedtime ritual with Lily — teeth, pajamas, one story, then a second because she bargained and he was soft for bargainers who looked like his child. When he turned out the light she said, "Dad."
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you get me from school."
Aaron kissed her forehead. "Me too, baby. Every time."
In the hallway Simone waited, not with the dread of a year ago, but with the quiet of a person who had learned to wait without assuming catastrophe. Aaron closed Lily's door. He walked to Simone. He rested his forehead against hers for a moment in the dim hall, a gesture that needed no audience and no clipboard and no public accounting.