"You remember?"
Richard nodded.
"Of course."
He paused.
Then added, "I haven't talked about her enough."
Maya looked toward him.
Richard continued.
"I think I was afraid that if we kept remembering her, we'd never learn how to live without her."
He swallowed.
"But that wasn't fair to either of you."
Ethan pushed a carrot around his plate.
"I don't want to forget her."
Richard's eyes softened.
"You won't have to."
After dinner, they went upstairs together.
Richard opened the storage closet.
He found the boxes containing Laura's photographs.
Some were wrapped in old newspaper.
Others stood inside their original frames.
Maya lifted the first.
Laura holding Ethan as a newborn.
She sat on a hospital bed, exhausted and radiant, while Richard stood beside her with one arm around Maya.
Maya stared.
Then smiled through tears.
"I remember this."
Richard looked surprised.
"You were only seven."
She nodded.
"Mom let me hold him first."
Ethan leaned closer.
"You held me?"
Maya laughed.
"Yes."
"Did I cry?"
"Immediately."
He grinned.
Richard carefully carried the photograph downstairs.
He hung it in the hallway.
Then another.
Laura and Maya baking cookies.
Laura laughing beside the garden.
Laura and Richard standing outside their first little apartment.
Laura holding Ethan's hand during his first trip to the beach.
By the time they finished, the hallway looked different.
Not newer.
Not more fashionable.
But more familiar.
Ethan stood beneath the largest photograph.
He looked at his mother.
Then whispered, "Hi, Mom."
Richard placed one hand against his son's shoulder.
Maya stood beside them.
For a long time, the family remained there.
No one needed to say anything.
That night, after both children had gone to their rooms, Richard returned to the dining table.
Laura's letter lay beneath the light.
He had read it four times.
Each reading seemed to reveal something he failed to understand before.
He took out his phone.
Searched for Daniel Carter.
Dozens of results appeared.
Attorneys.
Accountants.
Real-estate agents.
A retired police detective.
A financial investigations firm.
He narrowed the search.
Daniel Carter, forensic accounting, Pennsylvania.
A small firm's website appeared.
Carter Financial Review — Independent Investigations and Litigation Support.
Richard stared at the screen.
He recognized the name immediately.
Not from Laura's letter.
From six years earlier.
After her death, a man named Daniel Carter had called him.
Richard remembered the conversation vaguely.
He was sitting in his office at Bennett & Cole Restoration.
He had barely slept for days.
The funeral was over.
Maya had stopped eating properly.
Ethan woke screaming for his mother.
And Richard felt as though his entire life had been broken into pieces he could not reassemble.
A man called asking to discuss Laura's unfinished financial investigation.
Richard refused.