“I liked that.”

“You’re allowed to.”

“Even if she was unkind?”

“Yes.”

Arthur’s eyes filled.

“I don’t want to hate all of it.”

“You don’t have to.”

They stayed on the sofa.

For once, nobody demanded that the story become simpler before the child was allowed to feel it.

Elias wanted to restore every photograph immediately.

He imagined the hallway full again, the piano crowded with frames, the house announcing that Nora had never been erased.

Clara asked him to wait.

“Ask Arthur what he wants.”

“He said he wanted them back.”

“Then let him tell you where. And don’t make every room a reassurance he has to appreciate.”

Elias understood.

Barely.

His instinct was to do something large enough to cancel what happened.

Arthur needed something smaller and more reliable.

That Saturday, they opened the cupboard together.

Beatrice came for lunch. Simon arrived with a bag of pastries and a story about Nora getting banned from a family board game for hiding extra pieces in her sleeve.

Arthur was delighted.

“She cheated with Dad too.”

“She cheated with everyone,” Simon said. “Your mother believed rules were suggestions when she was losing.”

Elias laughed.

For the first time in months, Nora existed in the house as a person with habits and faults, not a fragile subject adults handled with ceremonial care.

They spread the photographs across the sitting room table.

Arthur chose the lake picture for his bedroom.

The missing-tooth photograph went back beside the stairs.

A family photograph from a holiday returned to the piano.

Then Arthur picked up a large wedding portrait.

He studied it.

“Do we have to put this one here?”

Elias felt himself hesitate.

It was the photograph he once passed every morning after Nora died.

But Arthur was asking a real question.

“Where would you like it?”

“Maybe in the album. It’s a lot of wedding.”

Beatrice coughed to hide a laugh.

Elias smiled.

“All right.”

They put it in the album.

Nobody accused Arthur of forgetting.

Nobody treated the choice as proof that Felicity had been right.

He could love his mother without wanting every wall to become a memorial.

The school booklet came home the following Monday.

Arthur placed it on the kitchen table.

Elias recognized the drawing of Nora in yellow boots.