A widowed businessman returns early to his quiet mansion, ready to confront the housekeeper, but what he sees changes everything

sketchbook in front of her. She looked at the drawing of the garden, the two small figures in the afternoon light.

“I’ll think about it,” she said finally.

He let it rest there. He had learned, over the course of a marriage and a loss and the slow rebuilding of things, that some answers need time before they are ready to be answers.