Chapter 8: Ordinary Continuity
At three months the accident was no longer the first fact of every morning.
Therapy continued on a reduced schedule. Work expanded by careful increments. The house absorbed the quiet of a life that no longer reserved emotional bandwidth for unanswered calls or the management of other people’s moving days. I cooked simple meals, answered client messages when they required answers, and sat by the window in the late afternoons without performing recovery for any audience.
My parents’ names appeared once in a secondary context—a mutual acquaintance asking, carefully, whether the family difficulty had been resolved. I said the legal matters were resolved and the personal ones were no longer active. The acquaintance did not press. Most people prefer the version of a story that ends with reconciliation; I preferred the version that ended with accurate documents. Both preferences could exist in the same city without further contact.
