Daniel laughed so hard he sat down on the grass.
Claire shook her head, smiling.
“He’s going to be insufferable about that for weeks,” she said.
“He should be,” I said.
“He earned it.”
She laughed.
And for a moment, in the warm kitchen with the sound of her children outside and the coffee going cold between us, the forty years of absence felt like what they actually were — the past.
Not gone, not forgotten, but behind us.
Where the past belongs.
Later, when I was getting ready to leave, Daniel appeared at my elbow.
“Are you coming back?” he said.
I crouched down to his level.
“If your mum says it’s alright,” I said.
He looked at Claire.
She nodded.
He turned back to me with the solemn gravity of an eight-year-old making a formal decision.
