on the floor beneath the two moon-shaped night-lights.
One had stopped working during the years she was gone.
Adrian was kneeling beside it with a screwdriver.
“Daddy can’t fix it,” Leo announced.
“Daddy is noticing that,” Adrian said.
Evelyn laughed.
It was the first unguarded laugh Adrian had heard from her since her return.
He looked up.
For a moment they simply watched each other.
“I kept them,” Adrian said, glancing at the moons.
“I couldn’t explain why.”
Evelyn sat beside Leo.
“You didn’t have to.”
Adrian finally repaired the loose connection.
The second moon flickered on.
Leo clapped.
Then he crawled between his parents, took one of Adrian’s hands and one of Evelyn’s, and pressed them together.
Neither adult pulled away.
Evelyn looked at the two small lights glowing above them.
For almost two years, people had told Adrian to accept that she was gone.
For almost two years, strangers had told Evelyn that the flashes in her mind could not be trusted.
In the end, the first person to recognize the truth had been the one person too young to doubt what his heart remembered.
Leo leaned against his mother’s shoulder.
“Say our moon words.”
Evelyn smiled and kissed the top of his head.
Adrian’s fingers remained gently intertwined with hers.
“Two moons, one light,” she whispered.
This time, when she finished the rhyme, she was home.
