She found him at two.
She had been awake — the specific alertness of the days before something significant, the way her mind refused to fully settle. She had gone to the kitchen for water and seen the courtyard light on through the window.
He was sitting on the low wall at the edge of the courtyard — the same wall where she had sat the evening he asked her to stay permanently — with Daniel’s photograph in his hand and the Chicago night around him and the plants growing quietly in the dark.
She went outside.
He heard her come — he always heard her. He didn’t turn immediately. She sat beside him on the wall and looked at what he was looking at.
The photograph. Daniel at twenty-four, laughing, mid-sentence, the jacket slightly too big.
“Tell me,” she said.
He was quiet for a moment.
“
