Despite my best efforts to stay grounded, I drifted up one last time, so high above reality I could do nothing but watch us all as we sat around the dinner table making small talk. It was a perfect window into the life we might have had. A world where Marley would be eating dinner three doors down from us, home from college for a few weeks. Her great-great-grandfather’s birdhouse clock would chirp out its hourly greeting, that California quail celebrating his temporary freedom right as Marley would back her chair away from the table.

“I’m going over to the Stantons’,” she’d tell her dad.

“Be home before midnight,” he’d tell her.

“Dad, please. I’m an adult now.”

“I know, but you’re still my baby girl.”

I never had to close my eyes to see it, but I needed to close them to erase it. Squeezing tight, I releasing that imagined life like a balloon, letting it float off without me attached to it. When I opened my eyes again, Nick placed his hand atop my leg and squeezed three times.

I put my hand atop his and squeezed back.

We finished our meal. Nick offered to wash the plates. Harrison offered to take out the trash.

“Time for the boys to be on their way,” Dad said when their voluntary chores had been completed.

Aidy and I escorted them to our front door.

“Thanks,” Harrison whispered to me. “I needed this.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Bro.”

“Nah,” he responded with a laugh. He gave me a quick, committed hug, then kissed Aidy on the cheek. “Love you,” he told her. He ducked his head and took a left, off to his spot along Albany Lane.

“Love you too,” she replied.

The three of us watched his shadow disappear into the night. Aidy turned to Nick and me. Her lips squeezed tight as she swallowed back what looked like tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not enough, but I am.” She left before she got any more emotional, bounding up the stairs and into her bedroom.

Nick and I stepped outside. We craned our heads to see the sky above us. No matter how I squinted, my Marley was indecipherable among the blur of stars.

“Do you feel her anymore?” I asked him.

“Not like I did before.”

“Me neither. But I know she’s still there.”

“I do too.”

Nick and I stayed like that, standing side by side, gazing at the stars, until my dad came out to say Nick needed to go home.

Nick kissed my cheek. “Goodbye, Olivia,” he said.

“Goodbye, Nick.” He turned left, crossing Arbor Street and jogging into his house along Albany Lane, the last of Marley’s chess pieces to be returned to position.