Henry’s medicine is where you left it.

I washed the bowls.

She answered with a single heart.

I stared at the symbol longer than it deserved, then put the phone away before I could turn it into a promise it hadn’t made.

What surprised me most wasn’t how quickly I learned their preferences.

It was how much I wanted to know the parts I couldn’t witness: what made them laugh in class, whether someone had been unkind at recess, which books they read twice, and how Lauren sounded when she sang them to sleep.

The lost years remained lost.