Six full years passed, and my daughters grew up in the long shadow of that absence.

My second daughter left for college, hauling her boxes out to a car in a driveway where a truck had once pulled away full of her brothers.

My youngest learned to drive, grinding the gears of the old sedan while I gripped the door handle and tried not to think about the last time a vehicle carrying my children had left that driveway.

The girls moved through the ordinary enormous milestones of growing up, and I was there for all of them, and I was proud, and underneath the pride ran the river that never dried, the four empty places, the two sealed rooms.