“I shouldn’t have to feel like a visitor in another woman’s home.”

He could understand that feeling.

He wished understanding it were enough.

Then he remembered Arthur counting.

“Why did my son think we would eventually remove every picture?”

Felicity rubbed her forehead.

“Because children take things literally.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we were making a fresh start.”

“With or without his mother?”

“She’s dead.”

The words fell between them.

Elias looked at her for a long moment.

“Yes,” he said. “And he isn’t.”

Felicity’s expression changed.

“You know that isn’t what I meant.”

“Then tell me what you meant when you told him he had a new family.”

She did not answer immediately.

The clock on the mantel struck the half hour.

Elias looked toward the staircase.

They had thirty minutes before the promise he had made.

For once, another adult’s discomfort would have to fit around it.

Felicity said she had been trying to help Arthur move forward.

She said the house remained organized around a person who could never disagree with anyone.

Nora’s recipes.

Nora’s traditions.

Nora’s favorite place at the lake.

“I can’t win against someone everyone remembers perfectly.”

Elias sat down.

“Nobody asked you to win.”

“You say that, but every time I suggest something, there’s a story about how she did it.”

“Has Arthur been unkind to you?”

“No.”

“Has he told you that you can’t belong here?”

She looked at the carpet.

“No.”

“Then why are you asking him to prove you belong by forgetting her?”

Felicity’s eyes filled.

For a moment, he saw the woman who once admitted she dreaded attending parties where she knew nobody. The woman who stayed awake with him after a difficult anniversary. The person he loved.

Her insecurity was real.

So was what she had done with it.

“I didn’t ask him to forget.”

“You turned her face against the table.”

“It was one photograph.”

“He was counting the others.”

She wiped beneath one eye.

“You’re acting as though I’ve been cruel to him.”

Elias leaned forward.

“I’m asking what he has been hearing when neither Clara nor I were in the room.”