He took her hand. The dog tags were long gone from around his neck, replaced by a simple chain with a wedding band on it when he worked with his hands. "I meant what I said that day. If he was gone, we were gone. I believed it."
"I know you did."
"I'm glad I was wrong about the ending," he said. "Not wrong about how much he mattered. Wrong about whether we could come back from what you did."
Jasmine's eyes shone. "I live every day trying to deserve that wrongness."
"You don't have to deserve it every day," Marcus said. "You just have to keep choosing us. Same as me."
In the spring they adopted a dog from the same municipal shelter — not to replace Shadow, which nothing could, but to continue the practice of home. She was a mixed breed, maybe three years old, with one floppy ear and a tendency to steal socks. They named her Dusk, because Marcus said some loyalties arrive looking like evening, quiet and deep. Linda processed the adoption herself and, when the paperwork was done, said, "He's watching. Somewhere. He'd approve."