Lily leaned her bicycle against the railing and climbed the steps.
At the door she paused and looked back at the street, at the trees changing color, at the ordinary evening unfolding in the neighborhood where her father had lived and worked and fallen and left behind a family he had spent his last weeks making sure no one could take from. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad Daddy caught everything.”
Savannah’s throat tightened. She opened the door and held it.
“Me too, baby. Me too.”
They went inside. The kettle clicked on.
Rain began again, soft and steady, tapping against the windows of a house that belonged to them, every board and beam of it, not because a document said so, though it did, but because the man who loved them had made certain of it before he left, and what he built was strong enough to hold.
