I don’t know that I have ever been prouder of another human being.

Gene has not been back in our lives, not yet, though the door Brandon built is not locked forever — the card said contact requires Holly’s permission, and permission is a door, not a wall.

Holly keeps the candle on her windowsill now, in Spokane, in her own room, where her real laugh lives and the floppy-eared rabbit faces the door.

She has never lit it.