“Because she wanted everyone to know they were welcome.”

Lily considered this.

“Even if they were late?”

Daniel glanced at his father.

“Especially then.”

Dinner was imperfect.

The turkey was dry at one end and undercooked at the other. Thomas forgot to put out the cranberry sauce. Lily spilled apple juice on the new tablecloth, and Sophie accidentally knocked over one of the candles.

For the first time in years, Daniel did not spend the meal wondering how soon he could leave.

After dessert, Thomas brought out a tin of old family photographs. They passed them around the table, laughing at outdated hairstyles and the terrible wallpaper that had once covered the sitting room.

There was a photograph of Margaret holding Daniel as a newborn, her hair pulled back, her expression exhausted but amused. Another showed her helping Emily tie her shoes on the front steps. In one picture, Thomas was asleep in an armchair with both children curled against him.

Daniel looked at the photographs for a long time.

He had spent years remembering his parents as the people who had disappointed him during the worst period of his life. He had forgotten that they were also the people who had carried him through every ordinary year before it.

Later, when the others had gone to bed, he found Thomas standing alone in the dining room.

His father was looking at the empty chair.

“She’d have liked tonight,” Daniel said.

Thomas nodded.

“She would have complained about the turkey.”

“Definitely.”

“And she’d have told Sophie to put her phone away.”

Daniel smiled.

Thomas picked up Margaret’s plate.

For a moment, Daniel thought he would carry it to the kitchen.

Instead, his father sat down in the empty chair.

He rested his hands on the table and looked at the place where Margaret had always sat opposite him.

“Forty-seven years,” he said.

Daniel pulled out a chair beside him.

Thomas stared at the tablecloth.

“I keep thinking I’ve heard her come downstairs. Yesterday I bought her favorite marmalade without realizing what I was doing.”

Daniel listened.

“She used to leave the bathroom light on,” Thomas continued. “Drove me mad. Every night I’d get up and switch it off.”

He smiled faintly.

“Now I leave it on myself.”

Daniel reached across the table and put his hand over his father’s.

They stayed there for a long while, listening to the old house settle around them.

Chapter Six: The Following Year

The next Christmas, Daniel returned to Bellweather with Rebecca and Lily on December twenty-second.

They brought presents, two suitcases, and a box of ornaments Lily had made at school. Emily and Sophie came over on Christmas Eve to help decorate the tree. Thomas had begun forgetting small things more often, so Daniel spent the afternoon labeling drawers and fixing a loose handrail on the stairs.