Dinner that evening was nothing special, which was exactly its glory.

Jim stayed and we ate at the small kitchen table with the window open to the spring air, and Lily told a long, winding story about a boy at school and a frog that may or may not have been real, and Jim asked her serious follow-up questions as though it were the most important news in the world, and she glowed.

Afterward there were the promised strawberry popsicles, eaten on the back step while the maple tree went gold and then gray in the falling light.

Lily sat between us, sticky and content, swinging her feet.