The week after Scottsdale, the house was quiet in the way that meant peace. Aaron found himself going to the study for no reason, opening the folder, reading David's letter again — the short one, the instructions — and putting it back where it lived with the others. He had read it enough times now that he knew it by heart, the way you know a song you have carried for years. *I wanted you to have time. I named you for a beginning.* He was still becoming. He had stopped being surprised by it.
Sophie was working at the kitchen table when he came in from the porch on Thursday morning, a printed page in her hands, her glasses pushed up into her hair.
"The review came," she said.
"Which review?"
"The one from Portland. The small paper." She looked at him, and there was something open in her face — the thing that was always open when the work went out and came back kind. "She wrote that the ferry passage 'does what great writing does: it makes the reader sit in the silence afterward.'"
