I didn’t need to turn a good message into a test of whether he would send another one.

When Marcus came outside with coffee, I showed him the picture.

He smiled, looked at the sea, and said, “They’re learning from each other.”

“I think we all are,” I said.

We stood together on the crooked porch as the morning brightened.

I could feel how much had changed since the phone rang in my workshop a year earlier.

The change wasn’t that my family had become flawless or that I no longer cared what they thought.

I still cared.