Apparently I guessed right. Scott had two bowls. “Tastes like I remember,” he said, and I couldn’t have asked for a better compliment. In May, Amber visited with two friends who knew nothing about the house, and they sat on the back porch admiring the creek without any idea it had once been the villain in a favorite childhood story.

I told them how, at eight, I’d insisted it swallowed my shoe, and they laughed. I pictured Dad hearing that story all those years ago, knowing full well I’d made it up and laughing anyway, because he loved the imagination behind it.

He’d always shown up. For every story. For every milestone. For every ordinary Tuesday phone call. Standing by the creek, I realized almost nothing out there had changed.

The maple still stood where it always had. The water still ran the way it always would.

That evening I called William, my closest friend from the hospital, who’d heard every step of this. “I think it’s finally starting to feel complete,” I said.

“What does complete feel like?” I looked around the kitchen — the rooster tiles, Dad’s recipe card now framed beside the stove, everything that had once been only his.