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“Please don’t. Positive reinforcement is exactly how we got here.”

Sprout sits beside me, tail sweeping happily across the pavement, entirely convinced he’s won.

The twins dissolve into giggles, the family laugh with them, and I decide we’ve pushed our luck far enough.

“Right,” I say, clipping Sprout’s lead a little shorter and handing the man the money for his food. “Before anybody loses another sandwich, we’re leaving.”

The girls fall into step beside me, although the dinosaurs only survive another thirty seconds before Emma replaces them.

“Emma likes dogs,” Biddy says. “And blue.”

Babs nods. “She likes dinosaurs too.”

“And she smiled at Sprout,” Biddy says. “People who smile at Sprout are nice.”

I glance between them. “So you’ve already decided she’s your friend?”

The twins exchange a quick look. “Yep.”

“I picked yesterday,” Babs says matter-of-factly.

I blink. “You hadn’t even met her yesterday.”

“I was early.”

I don’t bother arguing. History suggests it won’t help.

I switch off the hallway light upstairs, listen until the twins settle into the familiar silence that only arrives after bedtime, then carry the old storage box into the living room instead of tomorrow’s reports.

Sprout barely lifts his head from the rug before deciding I’m unlikely to offer snacks, and the apartment suddenly feels far too big without the girls filling every corner of it.

The lid scrapes against the cardboard as I lift the box away.

The photographs are exactly where I left them months ago.

I pick up the first stack and thumb through them, each picture carrying me somewhere else. Christmas mornings. A week at the beach where the girls insisted every shell belonged in my pockets.

Celeste laughing at whoever stood behind the camera because she’d forgotten it was there. She never smiled harder than when she wasn’t paying attention.

Another photograph slips forward.

She’s sitting in the hospital bed with Babs curled against her chest while Biddy sleeps across my shoulder. We both look exhausted enough to forget our own names.

“You look awful,” she’d teased.

“I’ve earned it.”

She laughed so hard a nurse came in to check whether we needed help.

I catch myself smiling before the memory fades, and the familiar ache settles into the place it always waits. It never disappears; it simply becomes another part of the furniture until a photograph pulls it back into view.

I turn over the next picture and pause.

The brick building behind Celeste takes me a second to recognize. A faded sign hangs over the entrance. One of the shelters where she volunteered.

I’d forgotten I’d ever taken this picture.

She’s standing near the back with her arm looped through a younger woman’s, surrounded by people smiling toward the camera as though they’ve known each other for years.