"No."
She reached across the space between them and took his hand. His palm was warm. The simple fact of contact after weeks of careful distance felt like arriving somewhere she had lived all along and forgotten how to enter.
"We tell each other the hard things," she said. "Even when we are afraid. Especially then. That is the rule. Write it down if you need to. Tattoo it somewhere only I can see."
Marco smiled, tired and real. "I will not tattoo it. But I will remember."
"Remember out loud," Elena said. "Remember where I can hear it."
They sat like that until the lamp seemed too bright and then exactly bright enough. Elena thought of her father's last smile. She thought of Carmen counting sober days. She thought of Sofia asking if she smelled pretty, innocent as weather, opening a door no adult had been brave enough to open. She thought of the pale-pink cardigan dragging at small ankles and the sparkly necklace hanging too low and the way a child's truth can be both a wrecking ball and a key.
Outside, Pennsylvania kept its winter. Inside, the family room held what it had always held: furniture, photographs, toys, light, and two people learning, again, how to tell the truth before the truth had to find them through a child's hands.