Helen was fifty-seven years old and had been organizing her life around absence for nearly a decade. Her son Daniel had died nine years ago—a wet road, a winter night, a phone call at 11:47 p.m. that she still couldn’t think about. He had been twenty-four. She had been a different person before it, though she could no longer remember exactly who.
Daniel had been the one who stayed close. He called every Sunday without fail, showed up with groceries she hadn’t asked for, and had a habit of humming while he ate—always the same half-remembered tune that had driven her mad for years. She would have given almost anything to hear it again.