that expression. Through all those evenings sitting beside me, he’d pictured the child we’d lost growing older.

But another thought troubled me: Aurora had actually grown up with us. Why was our living daughter absent from these pages? I took the manuscript and drove to her apartment.

Aurora opened her door, alarmed. 

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

“Your father wrote something I never knew about.”

She invited me inside and offered coffee.

“Come in. I’ll make coffee.”

“Please don’t make that expensive stuff you bought me last time.”

“It’s regular coffee, Mom.”

“