Whatever it was, it didn’t need him.

She was represented, Claire.

She signed in March.

He had said it as easily as the due date, as easily as his mother had said that name at the table with the good cups out.

The rattle had a scrape on it where somebody had scratched a family off it.

That is what an heirloom is, when you get down to it.

A thing that has been rubbed clean of the people who came before.