“Mm.”

“Can I ask you something and you don’t have to answer it?”

“Sure.”

“When did you find Dad’s phone?”

I don’t know why I asked it that night. I had never asked it. Not once in five years — not in the first terrible week, not in therapy, not on any of the anniversaries.

I had asked her a hundred kind questions about it and never that one, because the answer had always seemed obvious.