"Don't agree so fast that it becomes another performance of remorse," she said. "Sit in it."
He sat in it. Outside, Toby shrieked with joy as a snowball disintegrated against the railing. The sound entered the cabin like a reminder that joy still existed and was not canceled by complexity.
By noon they had a provisional plan. They would not contact Mara from the cabin on an emotional binge. They would finish the trip as a family — hikes if the weather allowed, board games if it did not — and Daniel would not treat the remaining days as a punishment or a penance tour. When they returned to Denver, they would call the attorney Natalie had used, confirm what if anything could be done about Greg and the letters to their parents, and draft a careful message to Mara through the adoption agency channels Natalie had noted in her papers. Elise would write the first version of that message. Daniel would not edit her voice out of fear.
"And the bag?" Daniel asked.
Elise looked toward the closet. "The bag stays with us until Mara says what she wants. If she wants the socks, she gets the socks. If she wants nothing, we keep the socks in a drawer and we don't turn them into a shrine. Natalie loved objects too much. I won't let her death become a museum."
Daniel almost reached for Elise's hand and stopped himself. She noticed the stop and, after a moment, closed the distance herself. Their fingers met — not a reconciliation seal, not yet, but a recognition that the bridge still had planks.
That afternoon they took Toby on a short walk along a packed trail behind the cabin. Daniel carried the trail map he had been studying the evening before, when the world was still a simpler fiction. Toby wore his own jacket and refused the tan sunhat, announcing that beach spies only worked at beaches. Elise walked between them when the path narrowed, and once, when Toby slipped, both parents lunged, and their shoulders bumped, and something like laughter escaped before grief could tax it.
In the evening they made grilled cheese and tomato soup. Toby fell asleep early, worn out by snow and altitude. Elise and Daniel sat on the sectional with the fire rebuilt, the coral handbag nowhere in sight, Natalie's letters in Elise's tote bag like a pulse.