Every little while he would open his eyes to check that I was still there, and find me still there, and close them again.

Around three in the morning he looked over at me with something almost like mischief.

“Dahlia.

Do you know how to make cinnamon apples?”

I laughed, wetly. “Roughly. Why?”

“My mother made them for me.

When I was a boy, in Ohio.”

So I went to the kitchen and found a can of sliced apples at the back of the pantry, and brown sugar and butter and a little cinnamon, and I warmed it all together on the stove.