Margaret turned seventy-four in the guest room that was no longer called the guest room. They had a cake. They had photographs. They had the kind of laughter that does not erase what came before it but sits beside it like a second chair at the table.
On the morning of her birthday, Margaret found Daniel alone in the foyer — of all places — tying his shoes before work. She stood on the staircase in her burgundy cardigan and looked at him with the glasses that still caught the light the way they had on that October night.
"Do you remember what I said when I arrived?" she asked.
Daniel looked up. Blue eyes. Light stubble. The face of a man who remembered everything about that night and had decided, over years, to keep remembering without letting the memory become the only story the house knew how to tell.
"Ask your wife," he said.