Daniel nodded. "Yeah. Just remembering."
"The suitcase night?"
"The suitcase night," he agreed. "And everything after."
Margaret, without looking up from her knitting, said, "Everything after is the part that counts. Anyone can arrive with a suitcase. Staying is the art."
Daniel smiled. He hung his keys on the hook by the door. He stepped fully into the living room, into the cone of light from the floor lamp, into the unfinished, imperfect, continuing story of a family that had learned — expensive, public, foyer-loud — that the most dangerous signatures are the ones you make alone, and the most durable homes are the ones where the hard questions get asked with everyone still in the room.