In March, a letter arrived from Chris's parents in Ohio—Oliver's grandparents—requesting a longer summer visit than the guardianship plan had sketched. Old fear flared: another rearrangement, another decision made in rooms Laura only half occupied. This time Daniel put the letter on the table between them and Rachel on speakerphone before answering.
They negotiated like people who had learned negotiation's cost. Two weeks in Ohio, not four. Video calls every other night. Rachel would fly out for the middle weekend. Laura would pack the giraffe. Ethan would send a hand-drawn map of their backyard so Oliver wouldn't forget the geography of home.
When the call ended, Laura looked at Daniel and Rachel's thumbnail on the dark phone and said, "That. That is what you should have done in June."
"I know," Daniel said.
"Good," Laura said. "Knowing is cheaper than repeating."
In May, almost a year after the crash on 95, they drove to the cemetery in Baltimore. Ethan brought a drawing. Rachel brought Mara's favorite cheap drugstore lipstick and set it on the headstone with a defiance Laura admired. Daniel stood with his hands in his pockets and told Chris, under his breath, that Oliver had started laughing at peekaboo like it was a miracle engineered for him alone.
Laura held Oliver on her hip and looked at the engraved names and thought of her mother, buried in another state beneath a stone Laura had chosen while numb. She thought of how death made archivists of the living: keepers of jokes, recipes, guardianship papers, baby monitors glowing on coffee tables in suburban Maryland nights.
On the drive home, Ethan fell asleep against his booster seat. Oliver drooled on Laura's shoulder. Rachel, in the back, hummed something tuneless. Daniel drove with both hands on the wheel, hazel eyes on the road, the dark-green henley replaced by a spring shirt that made him look closer to the man who had once joked about mortality over beer.