“Let’s go home,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”

Dr. Pryor wasn’t off the hook either. The medical board opened an investigation into his failure to ensure proper parental notification. He’d known about both babies. He’d known I wasn’t told. He’d let Patricia handle it because it was easier.

His medical license was placed under review. He issued a formal written apology. I didn’t read it.

David told me Pryor could face malpractice charges if Emma chose to pursue it. She thought about it for a week.

“No,” she said finally. “He’s not the one who made the choice. He’s just the one who didn’t stop it.”

“That’s generous.”

“It’s not generous,” she said. “It’s efficient. I only have so much fight in me. I’d rather spend it on something that matters.”

She was twenty years old and already wiser than most people I’d ever known.

Emma moved in three weeks after that first morning in the cemetery. Not because I asked her to. Because she showed up at my door with a backpack and said, “I don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow. Or the day after.”

“Then stay,” I said.

She did.

It wasn’t easy. She flinched when I raised my voice — even if I was just yelling at the TV during a Seahawks game. She hoarded food in her dresser drawer. Granola bars. Crackers. Cans of soup. Like she was preparing for the day the door would close again.

I never mentioned it. I just made sure the pantry was always full.

She didn’t call me Dad. I didn’t ask her to.

We had a routine. Coffee in the morning. She liked hers black, no sugar. Same as Eleanor. I tried not to stare when she did things like that — small, unconscious echoes of a woman she’d never met.

She helped me organize the garage one afternoon. Found a box of Eleanor’s old sketchbooks buried behind winter coats.

“Can I look at these?” she asked, holding the box like it was made of glass.

“They’re yours as much as mine,” I said.

She spent three hours on the garage floor, turning pages. She didn’t say anything. But when she came inside, her eyes were red.

“She was really good,” Emma said.

“She was.”

“I draw the same way she did. The same angles. The same light.” She shook her head. “How is that possible? I never saw these.”

“Maybe some things aren’t taught,” I said. “Maybe they’re just passed down.”

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded and went upstairs.

One night, about six weeks in, I was sitting in the living room reading when she came downstairs and stood in the doorway.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Anything.”

“What was she like? Mom?”

I closed my book.

“Sit down,” I said.

She sat on the opposite end of the couch. Pulled her knees to her chest. Waited.

“Eleanor was quiet,” I said. “Not shy. Quiet. There’s a difference. She noticed everything. She’d walk into a room and know who was happy, who was faking, who needed to leave. She never said it out loud. She’d just — adjust. Make space for people.”

Emma was watching me with those green-gold eyes.

“She painted,” I continued. “Watercolors mostly. Landscapes. She said oil paints were too permanent. She liked that watercolors could bleed and blur. She said that’s how memory works.”

“I paint,” Emma said softly.

“I know,” I said. “I saw the sketchbook in your bag.”

She almost smiled. Almost. Then caught herself, like smiling was something she’d trained herself out of.

“She would have loved you,” I said. “She would have been furious about what happened. And she would have moved heaven and earth to find you.”

Emma’s eyes filled. She didn’t cry. But she didn’t look away either.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

It happened on a Tuesday. Nothing special about the day. No anniversary. No milestone. Just a regular, ordinary Tuesday.

I was making dinner. Pasta. Nothing fancy. Emma was sitting at the counter doing homework, her textbook open, pencil in her mouth.

“Hey,” she said, not looking up from her book. “Can you pass the salt?”

I passed it.