"Tea," Naomi said, not a question.
They sat. Helen kept her coat on, a queen declining to surrender the signs of travel. Emma's finger hovered over the icon. She looked at her father.
"You can press it," he said. "Or I can. Your choice. You found her."
Emma pressed it. The speaker was thin and bright. Claire's voice entered the kitchen three years late, a little hoarse, a little amused at its own secrecy, and as alive as a voice can be when the body has already been returned to the ground behind the church where the lamb watched the road.
No one reached for anyone's hand. They were not that kind of family in that kind of minute. They listened the way people listen to a verdict, or to a lullaby, which is to say with their whole chests and with no idea what their faces were doing.