Daniel pressed his palms against his eyes.

Thomas waited.

“She wasn’t perfect,” he said eventually. “She could be sharp. She could hold a grudge over something as ridiculous as a borrowed saucepan. But she loved you. She loved you every day you were away.”

Daniel lowered his hands.

“I thought there’d be time.”

Thomas looked toward the kitchen window.

“Yes,” he said. “So did she.”

Chapter Five: Christmas Eve

On December twenty-fourth, the Whitmore family gathered at the house on Willow Lane.

Daniel had brought his wife, Rebecca, and their nine-year-old daughter, Lily. Emily arrived with Sophie and a casserole. Thomas had spent the morning arranging the wooden Christmas village on the windowsill, though he could not remember where Margaret kept the little church.

They found it in a shoebox beneath the stairs.

The house was full of unfamiliar noise. Lily asked questions about every photograph. Sophie played Christmas music from her phone. Rebecca helped Emily in the kitchen, where they discovered that Margaret had left handwritten instructions for roasting the turkey taped inside a cupboard door.

Do not trust the thermometer in the oven.

Beneath that, in smaller writing:

Thomas always does.

Emily laughed when she read it.

Then she began to cry.

Rebecca put an arm around her shoulders and waited until she was ready to continue.

At six o’clock, they sat down to dinner.

Thomas occupied his usual chair at the head of the table. Emily sat beside Sophie, while Daniel took the place opposite his sister. Lily was between her parents, carefully unfolding a napkin shaped like a Christmas tree.

There was one empty chair.

Daniel had noticed it when he entered the dining room.

A cream-colored plate stood before it, with a folded napkin and the silver cutlery Margaret used only on special occasions.

Emily looked at her father.

“Dad, should we put that away?”

Thomas shook his head.

“No.”

“There’s no one sitting there.”

“I know.”

Daniel studied the plate.

For eleven years, he had imagined that empty place as an accusation. He had pictured his mother setting it with a tight mouth, making sure everyone noticed his absence.

Now he understood that she had probably laid it while humming to herself, straightening the fork and knife, wondering whether the telephone might ring.

Lily tugged at his sleeve.

“Daddy, whose chair is that?”

Daniel looked at his daughter.

He could have told her it was Grandma’s chair. He could have explained the years of silence, the failed business, the arguments and missed holidays. But she was nine, and the history belonged to adults who had spent too long making it complicated.

“It was a place Grandma always kept at the table,” he said.

“Why?”