I sat on the bench nearby and spoke aloud.

“She may be alive, Ellie.

I don’t know how to tell you that.

I don’t know what it means for the years we lost.”

Leaves moved over the grass.

I remembered Eleanor at the kitchen sink the week after the funeral, holding Laura’s favorite blue mug without washing it because the faint lipstick mark on the rim was the last thing our daughter had touched.

I remembered her saying she wanted Emma to grow up surrounded by love, not by everyone’s sorrow.