"She wanted daylight."
"Yes."
They sat until the garage grew cold. When they went in, Emma put the phone on the kitchen table as she sometimes did, not to play it, just to let it be an object among objects, a placemat, a plant, a set of keys. David fixed a loose cabinet hinge because his hands needed a small honesty. The porch light, visible through the window, held its little post against the evening. It was only a bulb. It was also a kept promise. Some promises are allowed to be that size.
Emma left for college in a city far enough away that the church could not be seen from any road she drove daily, and near enough that a bus could return her to Elder Street in an afternoon if someone needed a hinge fixed or a truth said aloud. She studied education with a minor in nothing that would make Helen say "practical," though Helen said it anyway, proudly, as if she had invented the word. In her dorm room the pothos, Triangle the Second, trailed toward a window that faced a brick wall. She did not bring Claire's phone. It stayed in the drawer of her childhood desk, charged once a month by David, who had become a man who understood that batteries are a form of respect.
They spoke on Sundays. He did not fill the calls with cheer. She did not fill them with a performance of independence. He told her when the maple lost a limb in a storm. She told him when a boy wanted more of her than she had written a policy for. "Daylight," he said, half joking, and she said, "Don't weaponize Mom," and then, "I'm using it anyway. I told him I don't do half-truths. He looked at me like I'd brought a sword to a snack." David laughed. The laugh was one of the things college gave back to him, the knowledge that his daughter could tease the sacred and not drop it.