When Elaine invites me to dinner, I go, bringing bread because Peter will inevitably forget it.

We celebrate birthdays in a way that makes room for everybody.

We tell the truth even when it takes longer and hurts more than silence.

The blue hospital envelope remains in my drawer.

I no longer open it every week.

The official correction sits beside the footprints, and the earliest photograph of the boys is tucked into the corner.

They are reminders of what happened, not instructions for how the rest of my life must be lived.

One Sunday, Wyatt and Austin arrived together, arguing about a broken bicycle chain.