I remembered the day clearly, driving through the dark toward her.

My father had been gone about a year, and my mother had spent that year slowly, deliberately reclaiming the house from grief — repainting, giving away his suits, learning to sleep in the middle of the bed.

The fireplace was part of that.

She’d told me the old hearth reminded her of winter evenings with him, and that she loved those memories but could not keep lighting a fire into them every night, and so she was going to put in something new that was only hers.

I had thought it was a small, sad, sensible thing at the time, one more quiet adjustment in a widow’s long adjustment to being alone.

I had not thought about it in years.