Laura discovered my mother’s old mixing bowls in the back of a cupboard and held up the chipped blue one.

“You are not giving this away,” she said.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

We ate sandwiches on the kitchen floor because the table was covered with boxes.

For an instant I saw my mother beside us, laughing at the crumbs.

The home began to feel familiar again, not because every bad memory had been removed, but because people I trusted had filled it with new ones.

That evening I made a list of repairs I’d postponed for years.