He had been gone for two years, but she would never forget his taste or touch. He was as known to her now as he ever had been, as if her sleep renewed her memories of him and made them fresh again. If the price of that was a gloom hanging over the beginning of each day, it was a price she was happy to pay.

“Lovely day, sunny and cool,” Sammi said when Angela walked into the living room. She sat down on a tatty sofa and took the steaming mug Sammi offered, closing her eyes and sighing as she breathed in the coffee, groaning in delight when she took the first taste. For someone who did not like hot drinks, the girl sure made a good cup of Joe.

“I’m going for a walk up to the waterfalls,” Sammi said.

“Don’t forget we’re looking at Lord of the Flies again later.”

“Aww, Angela.” There it was. The teenage drawl. And Angela loved it. It was a normality she had despaired Sammi ever finding.

“It’s a great book!”

“It’s boring!”

“How can you possibly find it boring?”

Sammi was smirking a little as she turned away and went back into the kitchen, and Angela almost called her on it. She knew she was being played. Sammi was the brightest girl she had ever known, and sometimes Angela felt it was her doing the learning and Sammi the teaching.

“Want some scrambled eggs?” Sammi asked.

“Sure. I’ll fetch some eggs.”

“I’ll get them. You’re old.” Sammi darted from the kitchen and through the front door before Angela could respond and disappeared around the side of the cabin.

Angela leaned back on the sofa and sighed. She wasn’t old, but sometimes she felt it. Playing happy families was ageing both of them. They’d spoken about it very openly—about how trying to make things feel normal was the only way to move on—but there was always a falseness to acting like this that remained as an underlying tension beneath and behind every chirpy conversation and light-hearted exchange. Two years might be long enough to begin moving on from loss, but the losses they had both suffered were not so simple to confront.

However much people tried to convince Angela that Vince was gone forever, she did not know for sure that he was dead. In her mind—and perhaps in those deep, dark dreams that bled into and tainted her waking hours—he was still there.