She wanted to pack his lunch badly and improve at it.

She wanted the ordinary years.

They were the ones that had been taken, and they were the ones, day by unremarkable day, that she was finally being given back.

On Sundays the three of them brought white lilies to Quenby’s grave, and Percy sat on the grass and told his grandmother about his report cards and his ball games.

The shelf where the brass urn had stood stayed empty a long time, until one day Percy set a framed photo of Quenby there, and beside it a small glass jar of butterscotch candies — the kind she’d always kept in her purse.

“Then it’s a family tradition,” he declared, when Sidonie told him.