I dried the plates with a clean white cotton towel and stacked them in the cupboard over the counter.

Then I reached into the wooden box behind the tea tins and took out Harold’s blue ceramic mug.

It had one little chip on the outside rim where he had knocked it against the brass faucet back in nineteen ninety-two, but the glaze was still smooth and clean.

I placed the mug in the center of the new oak table, right beneath the warm glow of the ceiling fixture.

I laid my palm flat across my collarbone and looked at the blue stoneware against the fresh yellow paint.