“Soph—”

“I don’t want a thing in my room that reminds me I was the one who could have,” she said, and went upstairs.

A week later the shelf was empty when I went to pack it, and I found it in a box in the back of her car, wrapped in one of my dish towels, and I did not say anything and neither did she and we never have.

Sophie left in September. Undeclared major, which she announces to people with real pride, and which she told me, once, is the whole point: *nobody gets to decide, including me, not yet.*

Noah is at community college and works at a warehouse and still will not go to a concert or a fair or anywhere with a crowd and a single exit.

Eli repairs boats. He went back to it deliberately, in a marina, in daylight, on purpose, and he is very good and he is building something.