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The house feels fuller with every story.

I can almost picture him sprawled across the couch, interrupting all of us with corrections he'd insist were important.

The ache remains.

I think it always will.

But as Maggie leans against me and laughs through fresh tears, I realize Ben hasn't vanished from this place.

He's woven through every memory we share, every story we tell, every piece of ourselves that still carries him forward.

Somehow, Maggie and I end up sitting on the living room floor together.

We talk.

Really talk.

The kind of conversation that used to happen before life scattered us in different directions.

Stories about Mom lead to stories about Dad. Dad reminds us of Ben. Ben reminds us of a dozen other memories we'd buried under years of busy schedules and unfinished phone calls.

Some memories leave us laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. Others crack open wounds we thought had scarred over.

Most manage to do both at the same time.

Maggie eventually falls silent and studies the room around her.

Her gaze moves across the bookshelves, the family photos, the worn furniture that has survived decades of our family treating it with questionable respect.

"I thought my family was gone," she says.

My chest tightens. "It was always here."

She draws one knee to her chest and rests her chin on it. "I came pretty close to walking away from all of it."

I glance toward Ben's bookshelves. "There's one thing I've been meaning to ask you."

Her eyes follow mine. "The note?" Maggie rubs her thumb across her knuckles before looking down at her hands. "I knew if Tom ever found the note, I couldn't make any of it obvious."

I nod. "I figured out enough to find you, but some of it still didn't make sense."

She gives a faint smile. "'Rain City' meant Seattle. I couldn't write the name because if Tom found it, he'd start looking here."

"And 'don't follow the first trail'?"

"That was for you too." She glances at me. "Tom always chased whatever looked obvious first. I figured he wouldn't be the only one. I needed you to keep looking if the first lead went nowhere."

I think back to the weeks we'd spent chasing dead ends before finally reaching Seattle.

"'He cries better than he tells the truth,'" I say quietly.

Her expression hardens. "That's how he found me before. He'd turn up looking devastated and tell people his girlfriend had disappeared. Everyone wanted to help him because he looked like a man whose whole world had fallen apart."

I let that settle before asking, "'So what about the song?'"

That finally brings a real smile to her face. “Lucy went through that phase of wanting 'Hello Seattle' every night before bed. I thought her humming it might help you.”

“She hasn't been singing much,” I confess. “But I would’ve recognized Owl City for sure. But what about Ben hating it here? You didn’t mean Redwood Run, did you?”