The third was considerably larger, with wild hair and arms stretched wide.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Nora grinned.
“Grandpa.”
My throat tightened.
She had never met him.
Not really.
My father died before she was born.
Yet somehow his stories lived inside our home so completely that she spoke about him as though he had simply stepped into another room.
“Grandpa made my baby bed,” she announced proudly.
“He did.”
“He loved me before I was here.”
The words hit harder than she could possibly know.
I knelt beside her.
“Yes,” I whispered. “He really did.”
She nodded as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.
Children had a way of understanding love better than adults ever did.
For them, love wasn’t measured by years.
It was measured by presence.
By sacrifice.
By the people who stayed.
The doorbell rang.
Nora sprinted toward the entrance.
“Race you!”
“You always cheat,” I called after her.
“No proof!”
I laughed despite myself.
When I opened the door, Claire stood outside with her twin boys.
Five years had changed her too.
There was less fear in her eyes now.
More confidence.
More peace.
“Hope we’re not early,” she said.
“You’re late.”
She gasped dramatically.
The boys immediately ran past us into the house.
Nora squealed in delight.
Within seconds the living room became a tornado of small feet and loud opinions.
Claire watched them fondly.
“Can you believe they’re this big already?”
“No.”
“Feels impossible.”
“It does.”
For a moment neither of us spoke.
Then her gaze drifted toward the reading room.
Toward the crib.
The crib.
The object that had once nearly destroyed an entire family.
Claire sighed softly.
“You know,” she said, “every time I see it, I think about how different everything could have been.”
I understood exactly what she meant.
One shove.
One icy step.
One decision to drive away.
Lives could fracture that quickly.
But they could also rebuild.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Brick by brick.
Choice by choice.
“I don’t think about them much anymore,” I admitted.
Claire looked surprised.
“Really?”
I nodded.
