At a quarter past one I laid Clara down.

She held her arms stiff the way she does, then let go of all of it at once.

The crib had been Lucas’s own, refinished in the garage the spring before.

I lifted the corner of the mattress and slid the folded cotton shirt underneath, flat and square.

It still smelled faintly of the drawer it had lived in for a year.

“There,” I said out loud to the empty room.