Steph stood in the kitchen and let the quiet come.

And underneath the quiet — underneath the rain, underneath the ticking, underneath the ordinary Sunday afternoon of a house in Ty Sign — the refrain continued. Not a song. Not words. Just the thing itself. The old, old melody of holding and letting go and holding again. The loop. The carrying. The love that repeats and repeats and never resolves because it was never meant to. It was only ever meant to go on.