“Keep the shop, Nora,” he said.

And then the door closed softly behind him, and he was gone.

I do not know, to this day, everything that shifted in Caleb Vance in that dusty shop, standing before his sister’s dress and the photograph of himself on his father’s shoulders.

I do not know whether he ever fully forgave his father, or himself, or made peace with the winter that had shattered his family.

Grief that old does not resolve in a single afternoon.