Time did not pass so much as it accumulated, like snow at the edges of a road no one plows because everyone assumes someone else will. The first winter after Amelia left, Ethan's hair began to gray at the temples in a way Vivian told him was distinguished. The second spring, he discovered he could pick his daughter's name out of the air in a grocery store and follow it down an aisle only to find it belonged to a stranger's child and not to the absence that followed him like a shadow. By the third summer, even the shadow had learned his schedule.
He went to work. He made decisions. He attended meetings where charts tried to retell their data as optimism. He learned that there are days when grief sits on your lap like a pet you never wanted and days when it sleeps under the couch and lets y
