Claire made a fresh pot of coffee and stood listening to her children in the next room, arguing happily about what they were going to name a cat they did not yet have — and she thought that sometimes losing everything is simply how you find out who was ever really going to stay.

The people still standing in her kitchen at the end of it, driving down through the night, calling every Wednesday, showing up on Saturdays to lose at chess — those were the real ones.

The rest had been furniture she’d mistaken for foundation. Now she knew the difference, and she would never forget it again, and there was, she decided, listening to Owen tell Zoe that no cat of theirs was going to be named Sparkle, a kind of wealth in simply knowing.

THE END.