I had built a life without Laura in it.

I had built it deliberately, and well.

And with a single chime, she had reached back into it.

That is the thing about a wound you believe has healed: you do not know how thin the new skin over it really is until something presses on it.

I would have told you, that morning, before the phone chimed, that I was long over Laura, that fifteen years and six daughters and a whole rebuilt life had put her firmly in my past.

And it was mostly true.