Lacy and I were making a house together, more consciously than before. A new start, a new phase. One in which we grew crops, and children. Lacy sang then, sometimes. Not words, but the string melodies she kept in her head. Never those sappy words about wizards and lemonade.

There was kale and broccoli, as well as tomatoes. Those pots are empty entirely.

On April twenty-eighth, Hale Dankforth, one angry man, ran the stop sign and hit my van. Twenty-six days of the great life, from the positive pregnancy test on the second up to that moment.

I wanted it back, even in the hospital bed, even in the cloud of analgesia and staring at the scans of my awful smashed knee and the brace that encased it after the surgery. Not a knee for a building site, for the Novotny crew, for paying the bills. Wade said he would cover me, no problem, until the insurance kicked in. And also if it didn’t. He asked if I’d ever thought about real estate, and told me he had a buddy in Rotary, Rob McCord.

‘It’s a people job,’ he said as he sat on the plastic chair beside my hospital bed. Lacy was downstairs at a vending machine or taking a walk. ‘It’s about people skills. You got those. That expression, “a good knee for real estate” – no-one ever said that, did they?’

The obligatory courses were scheduled months apart, and the next one was in three weeks. They had a vacancy and I took it. We stayed in Anchorage those weekends, with Wade and Colleen, making the best of it, a fun time for Cedar. I was okay on the crutches by then, and coming down off the opioids.

The second weekend, we told them about the baby. And then it was gone.

It did not cause the miscarriage, the OB-GYN said about all of that. The injury, the course, the stress. Miscarriages happen. Simple fact. But, even now, it’s hard not to wonder.

I’ve made it to the bottom of the steps when Lacy opens the door and Cedar rushes past her into the house. She hasn’t been up long. She’s wearing ugg boots and a robe tied at the waist.

‘I have lunch.’ I hold the Merc bag up as I take the railing with my other hand.

‘I just ate a sandwich,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘You don’t know what I’ve got yet.’ I can feel the drizzle settling in my hair, running down my neck. ‘Do the names Häagen and Dazs mean anything to you?’

‘I’m aware of those gentlemen.’ She gives me a half-smile. ‘Pretend gentlemen.’

She stands aside to let me in and closes the door behind me. In the kitchen, I put the ice cream in the freezer. The breadboard is where I left it after breakfast, not a crumb on it.

‘That was a very tidy sandwich.’ I put a bagel on the board and open the drawer below to find the bread knife.