Theodore comes too, and sits at the counter, and teases her, and now that I understand the teasing is love, I tease her right alongside him, and she swats us both and glows.

The guest room became my office, as I had dreamed, but it is not the room I think of when I think of what those six months gave me.

I think of the kitchen, and the flour on the counter, and my mother-in-law’s hands guiding mine, and the enormous unlikely gift that came out of the worst misjudgment of my life.

I set out that morning to reclaim a room.