My name is Gideon, and I work nights as an ER nurse in a trauma unit, which means I have spent most of my adult life noticing pain before people are ready to name it.

Two months passed.

Spring arrived with a sudden burst of warmth that thawed the ground and brought deep green shoots out of the soil around the front porch of 412 Birch Street.

The house didn't smell like lemon polish and old secret dust anymore.

We had spent three weeks repainting every room. The dark wood hallway was now a bright, clean cream color. Lumi’s bedroom upstairs was painted a soft lavender, with glowing star decals spread across the ceiling and a brand-new white desk positioned near the window where she could draw.

I had taken three weeks of accrued vacation time from the trauma unit to be home full-time.

Every morning at 7:00 a.m., we ate breakfast together at the kitchen table—the same table where Lumi had once laid down the plastic sleeve with the recording device. But now, the table was covered in cereal boxes, watercolor paper, and drawing markers.

At 3:30 p.m. on a bright Tuesday afternoon, the school bus hissed to a stop at the corner of Birch Street.

I stood on the front porch, holding two cups of homemade lemonade, watching Lumi hop off the bus steps. She wasn't wearing a hoodie with sleeves pulled over her wrists. She was wearing a bright blue denim jacket, her dark hair tied back in two bouncy pigtails.

She ran up the paved walkway, her backpack bouncing lightly against her shoulders.

"Gideon! Look!" she shouted, pulling a paper out of her folder before she even reached the steps.

I knelt down as she climbed the porch. "What did you make today?"

She proudly handed me a large sheet of thick construction paper. It was a watercolor painting of a tall house with a bright yellow sun above it. Standing on the green lawn were two figures holding hands—a tall man in blue scrubs and a small girl in a yellow sweater with pink light-up sneakers.

At the top of the page, written in big, clear, purple crayon letters, were five words:

MY DAD AND ME. FOREVER.

I looked at the drawing for a long time, feeling a warmth fill my chest that erased every lingering shadow of the last six months.

"Do you like it?" Lumi asked, leaning her head against my arm.

"I don't like it, Lumi," I said, pulling her into a warm side-hug and kissing the top of her head. "I love it. This is going right on the refrigerator, front and center."