She had found him standing in the kitchen holding a bunch of grocery-store roses and not knowing what to do with them or with himself, and she had tugged his sleeve and asked, with the grave practicality of a small child, which vase Mommy would like best.

And something about being given that one small decidable question — which vase — in the middle of a grief that had no answerable questions in it at all, had steadied him enough to keep going.

So they did it every year now.

The flowers were never fancy.

The point was never the flowers.

The point was that on the worst day of the calendar, the two of them had one thing to do together that was gentle and shared and about her — a way to hold Elowen’s memory in their hands for an evening instead of just in the ache behind the ribs.