Two years after the closet, the house held a different kind of evening.
Marcus came home from work at a reasonable hour. Mei met him at the door without perfume that belonged to anyone else. Nora, eight now, long dark hair still messy in a ponytail, warm beige skin glowing from soccer practice, announced that she had organized the coat closet by color and that both of them were welcome to be impressed. They were impressed. They ate dinner. They argued briefly about whose turn it was to wash dishes and resolved it the way functional couples do — with a coin flip and a joke.
Later, upstairs, in the bedroom that still had pale oak nightstands and wedding photographs and a laundry basket that sometimes overflowed, Marcus found Nora in the walk-in closet wearing one of his white dress shirts — his, unmistakably, the monogram on the cuff a quiet claim — and a soft fabric belt she had invented as a tie.
"Daddy, do I look ready for work?"
Marcus glanced at Mei in the doorway. Mei's mouth trembled toward a smile that was not forced. The memory of another shirt rose between them like smoke and then thinned, not gone, never fully gone, but no longer the only weather in the room.
"You look more professional than me," Marcus said.
Nora grinned. "I found the tie too! Well. I made it."