After the funeral, Caleb and I began with contact. He helped me cancel Simone's phone plan. I gave him her cast-iron pan and the box of photographs she labeled for him. We met with the estate lawyer. Whenever conversation drifted toward the old argument, one of us would become formal and retreat.

I resisted the urge to fix that retreat. Instead, I asked whether he wanted to talk or stop. Sometimes he stopped. Sometimes he told me details I had never heard, including how embarrassed he felt when the market stall failed and how certain he had been that Simone saw him as a permanent risk. I listened without correcting his memory. He listened when I described the nights she reread his childhood letters.

Caleb did not open a restaurant. He took a kitchen-management job and enrolled in an accounting course. Six months later, he developed a catering menu with three dishes rather than thirty. He showed me the budget and asked for my opinion, not my money. I told him where the fuel estimate looked low and where his plan looked strong. Then I stopped speaking.

On Simone's birthday, we cooked her favorite lentil stew in the pan. Caleb brought both blue envelopes but kept them in his bag. He said he no longer read them every week. I admitted I had sometimes wished to see his letter, not from entitlement, but from longing to know every part of her final story. He thanked me for leaving it private.

We carried bowls to the porch and watched rain gather on the railing. Caleb said he was still angry that I had opened the coffin. I corrected him: I had asked to open it; he had agreed and retrieved the envelope himself. He considered the distinction and nodded. I said I was still unsure whether stopping the cremation had been right. He answered that uncertainty was probably why he trusted my explanation. Our relationship was not repaired like a broken chair. It was being made differently, with fewer hidden joints.