“Did you get them?”

“No.”

Ari frowned.

“Daddy.”

Claire laughed into her napkin.

It was the first time she had laughed since Ari called her a monster.

Then my mother told Ari something I had almost forgotten.

When Sarah was pregnant, she talked to her stomach constantly.

In the grocery store.

In the car.

While folding laundry.

She gave Ari running commentary on everything she was doing.

“She talked to me?”

“Every day,” I said.

“What did she say?”

I looked down at my plate.

There was one memory I hadn’t touched in years.

Sarah had been lying beside me in bed, one hand on her stomach.

She whispered to Ari because she thought I was asleep.

“She told you she couldn’t wait to meet you.”

Ari stared at me.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Her fingers moved toward Sarah’s picture.

This time, when she touched the frame, she smiled.

Claire Asked for Her Own Place

We stayed at that table almost two hours.

Nobody cleared the plates.

Nobody cared that the potatoes went cold.

Every time the conversation slowed, Ari asked another question.

Did Sarah like ice cream?

Chocolate chip.

Was she scared of bugs?

Spiders, yes. Bees, no.

Could she swim?

Better than me.

Did she want a girl?

She wanted Ari.

That was the answer that mattered.

At some point, Ari climbed down from her chair.

She walked around the table and stopped beside Claire.

Claire looked up at her but didn’t reach out.

“Are you still a monster?” Ari asked.

My mother made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a gasp.

Claire considered the question seriously.

“I hope not.”

Ari looked toward Sarah’s photograph.

“If I love you, Mommy can stay?”

Claire’s expression changed.

She knelt so they were at the same height.

“I hope your mommy always stays.”

Ari studied her.

“But Grandma said you’re my new mommy.”

Claire glanced at my mother.

Mom looked miserable.

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said it that way.”

Claire turned back to Ari.

“I don’t need to be your new mommy.”

“Then what are you?”

Claire smiled a little.

“Claire.”

Ari frowned as though that answer was too simple.

Claire continued.

“Your mommy already has her place. I don’t want it.”

She touched Ari lightly over the heart.

“I just hope there’s another little place in here for me.”

Ari stood there for several seconds.

Then she climbed into Claire’s lap.

Claire closed her eyes.

She wrapped both arms around her.

Ari rested her cheek against Claire’s shoulder, then looked across the table at Sarah.

Nobody said anything.

We didn’t need to.

The Box Claire Found the Next Morning

The next morning, I woke to cabinets opening downstairs.

When I entered the kitchen, Claire was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside a cardboard box.

Dust covered one knee of her sweatpants.

“What are you doing?”

She held up an index card.

The handwriting stopped me halfway across the room.

Sarah’s.

“I found these in the back of the pantry.”

I sat down beside her.

It was Sarah’s old recipe box.

I had forgotten it existed.

Claire flipped through the cards carefully.

Chicken casserole.

Cornbread.

Peach cobbler.

Then she stopped.

Blueberry muffins.

She handed me the card.

At the bottom, Sarah had written in capital letters:

DON’T FORGET SUGAR AGAIN.

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

Claire smiled.

“We have blueberries.”

Ari appeared in the doorway in dinosaur pajamas.

“What blueberries?”

Claire held up the recipe.

“Your mommy’s muffins.”

Twenty minutes later, there was flour across half the kitchen.

Ari insisted on measuring the sugar herself.

Twice.

“Because Mommy forgot.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Claire read the recipe while Ari stirred.

Then Ari stopped.

“Can we play Mommy’s song?”

My hand froze on the carton of eggs.

For years, whenever I played Sarah’s recording, I found a reason to leave the room.

Laundry.

Trash.

A phone call.

Anything.

Ari had never noticed.

Or maybe she had.

I took out my phone.

I found the recording.

Sarah’s voice filled the kitchen.

Soft.

A little off-key.

Then came the familiar moment halfway through when she laughed.

Ari smiled immediately.

“That’s when I kicked?”

I looked at her.

“Yeah.”

Normally, that was where I would have walked away.

Instead, I cracked another egg into the bowl.

Claire said nothing.

Sarah kept singing.

And I stayed.

Four Places at the Table

The muffins came out uneven.

Some were too big. Two stuck to the pan.

They were perfect.

Ari carried one to the kitchen table.

Then she disappeared down the hallway.

She returned holding Sarah’s photograph against her chest.

I almost told her to be careful.

Instead, I watched.

She placed the picture on the fourth side of the table.

Then she took a napkin from the drawer.

One for me.

One for herself.

One for Claire.

And one beside Sarah.

Claire looked at me.

Neither of us spoke.

Ari climbed into her chair.

“Mommy needs a muffin.”

Claire took one from the cooling rack.

She put it on a small plate in front of Sarah’s photograph.

“This one has sugar.”

Ari laughed.

I sat across from them with my coffee.

Sarah’s photograph had spent years in the hallway.

Important.

Protected.

Untouched.

But also separate from us.

Now there was blueberry muffin crumbs beside the frame.

Ari started telling Claire the story about Sarah and the shelter dogs.

She got half the details wrong.

I corrected her.

She argued with me.

Claire listened.

When the recording finished, Ari asked me to play it again.

I did.

Then she reached across the table and took Claire’s hand.

She didn’t look worried afterward.

She didn’t ask whether Sarah was disappearing.

She just kept eating.

I looked at the fourth napkin beside Sarah’s photograph.

For years, I had treated remembering Sarah like opening a wound.

My daughter had treated forgetting her like losing a mother twice.

So we stopped making Sarah a subject we had to approach carefully.

We told stories.

We made her recipes.

We laughed when Ari asked embarrassing questions.

And Claire never tried to stand where Sarah had stood.

She didn’t need to.

There was room at the table for both of them.

That morning, with Sarah singing from my phone and Ari’s hand wrapped around Claire’s, the fourth place setting didn’t look empty anymore.