The house felt cavernous without Kevin and Emily. Their voices had trailed down the stairs and out the front door, leaving behind an echo that seemed to hang in the banister spindles and the picture frames on the wall. Elena stood in the doorway of her bedroom, listening to a silence that wasn’t quiet at all—pipes ticking, the heater sighing, the minute hand on the bedside clock nudging forward with dry, deliberate clicks. The bed looked too large, the duvet smoothed into an impersonal plane. On the dresser, a photo of Kevin at eight—missing tooth, grass-stained uniform, bat held like a future—tilted a fraction to the left. She straightened it, then straightened it again. The frame felt cold.
She told herself she should read, or wash the mugs in the sink, or answer the emails that had pil
