Claire lived in Oregon and agreed to speak with us by video call.

I arranged the laptop on my dining table, checked the camera twice, and sat beside Tobias as the screen connected.

Claire was sixty-five, with Jonah’s familiar nose and a row of photographs on the wall behind her.

“You look like him,” she told Tobias.

“The eyes are Evelyn’s, but that smile is ours.”

Tobias smiled, shy and astonished.

Claire held up a framed photograph of Jonah at fifty, standing beside a group of volunteers in front of a repaired house.

“He never had children that he knew of,” she said.