There were no encrypted phones buzzing on the hour with news of a shipment or a rival or a problem that needed a body to solve it.

There was no shadow over the door.

There was only the lake, and the pines, and the long light of a spring afternoon.

In the center of the sunlit terrace, our mother sat in her wheelchair, wrapped in a soft cashmere blanket.

She was very thin now, and very pale, and her breathing had grown shallow, but the thing that had haunted her face for months — the restless, cornered fear of a person dying among strangers — was simply gone.

In its place was something I did not have a word for, until I realized the word was peace.