Dad looked over my shoulder as I labeled the files.

“Your mother used to keep everything,” he said softly.

Mom had died when I was twenty-four.

She had been a school secretary who saved receipts for everything and believed paper could protect people when memory became unreliable.

“Sometimes I think I learned it from her,” I said.

“You learned more than that.”

The doorbell rang.

It was a florist with an enormous arrangement of white roses and a card signed by Lucas.