You carry them together, one in each hand, and you keep walking, and some ordinary sunlit afternoon you look up and realize the walking has quietly become a life again.

Chapter 14 — The Hilltop

The next autumn, on a hilltop where the wind moved gold leaves along a gravel path, I stood beside a polished granite headstone with a single name cut into it: Tessa Ballard.

Veronica, eight now, knelt in the soft grass and laid a bunch of yellow roses she had picked herself against the base of the stone, and ran her small fingers over the carved letters of her mother’s name, gently, the way you touch something you love.

There were no whispers that day.