Things we’ve never heard.”

I could not answer that.

The thought of hearing their voices — of Lucas saying something ordinary into a camera, alive — was more than I could hold standing up in my own kitchen.

I set down the knife I had been pretending to use, and I told Abigail I needed a minute, and I went upstairs to my bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed with my hands pressed between my knees, breathing, the way the grief counselor had taught me years ago, in for four, hold for four, out for four.

The grief counselor had given me the breathing years ago, in the early time when I could not get air into my body on the bad days, and it had become a reflex I reached for whenever the ground shifted.