Brooklyn.
Both laughing.
Dean stared.
"Where did you get this?"
"I told you I kept pictures."
He looked at her.
"Nine years."
She nodded.
"Long time."
He placed new photograph beside old.
Their wedding day.
Evan between them.
Two lives.
Not replacement.
Continuation.
When Evan was twenty-two, he asked Dean the question Clare had once feared he might.
"Did you love Clare while Mom was alive?"
They were closing the shop.
Dean stopped.
"No."
Evan nodded.
Then:
"Did you think about her?"
"Yes."
"Did Mom know?"
"Some."
Evan leaned against tool chest.
"Does that make you feel bad?"
Dean considered.
"It used to."
"Now?"
"No."
Evan waited.
Dean said:
"People make love sound like a house with one room."
"It isn't."
"Your mother was not competing with Clare."
"Clare is not replacing your mother."
"They are different chapters."
"Different people."
"Different versions of me."
Evan nodded.
"Clare worries about that."
Dean looked.
"She does?"
"Sometimes."
Dean smiled sadly.
"She shouldn't."
"You should tell her."
"I have."
"Tell her again."
Dean laughed.
"You become annoying with age."
"Genetics."
That night Dean told Clare.
Again.
She leaned against him in bed.
Older now.
Fine lines near eyes.
Still beautiful in ways twenty-five-year-old Dean could not have understood.
Clare whispered:
"I used to hate Anna."
Dean looked down.
"What?"
"Not her."
"The idea."
"Before I knew anything."
"When I thought she answered that phone and had everything I wanted."
Dean listened.
"Then I met Evan."
"He made her real."
"Then you told me about her."
"She became a person."
"Now sometimes I'm grateful she existed because she gave you a life I couldn't then."
Dean touched her hair.
"That's generous."
"No."
"It's true."
She looked up.
"And sometimes I'm jealous of years I didn't get."
"Also true."
"Both can exist."
Dean smiled.
"You're learning."
She hit him.
"Still annoying."
"Still here."
That was the important part.
Still here.
Twenty years after the roadside reunion, Dean and Clare returned to Route 7.
The shoulder had been widened.
New guardrail.
Trees taller.
The church steeple still visible down the valley.
They parked.
Dean moved slower now.
Clare's hair had silver mixed through brown.
She refused to dye it.
Dean loved it.
They stood beside the road.
Clare looked toward pavement.
"This is not exact spot."
"Yes it is."
"No."
"GPS."
"Your GPS lies."
"You always were impossible."
"You always were wrong."
Dean smiled.
They walked a few feet.
Clare stopped.
"Here."
"Why?"
"I remember that puddle."
"There is no puddle."
"Philosophically."
Dean laughed.
They stood.