"I think that's what memory does," she said eventually. "It stretches in both directions. Makes space where there wasn't any before. Like roots and branches — the deeper down we go, the wider the love spreads out."

He nodded but didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the horizon.

Steph looked down at her boots, fiddled with the seam of her glove. For a moment she was quiet, really quiet, in a way that felt important.

"It's not the same," she said, barely above the breeze, "but I still feel it. Like background static. My brother. Almost ten years now. And sometimes I still reach for the phone."

Papa glanced over, surprised. She rarely spoke of him.

"What would you say?" he asked. Not "I'm sorry." Just... what would you say?

She smiled, sad but not broken. The kind of smile that had learned to hold pain without collapsing under it.

"I'd probably tell him about Eira," she said quietly. "How she's got his eyebrows — that serious look when she's thinking hard about something ridiculous. Like whether dinosaurs would like jam." She paused. "He used to do that. Get dead serious about the most absurd things. Once spent twenty minutes explaining why penguins were technically dragons in disguise."

Papa gave a small laugh despite himself.

Steph's voice gentled. "Cyclist. Fit as anything. Then one morning — aneurysm. Just... gone. No warning. No goodbye. He was supposed to come over for Sunday roast."

The wind moved through the grass around them.

"I set the table for him anyway," she added. "For weeks. Peter stopped saying anything about it. Just... let me."

She picked up a stone, turned it over in her hand, studying its grey surface like it held messages.

Papa watched her, saying nothing, just holding space.

"Some days I wake up and I've forgotten he's gone," Steph said. "Just for a second. Then I remember and it's like falling through ice all over again." She paused. "But most days now... it's just the ache. Muscle memory. Like carrying a stone in your pocket. You forget it's there, then you reach in and — oh. Right. This."

She held up the stone she'd been turning.

Tima made a small sound, shifting in Papa's arms. He stroked her back gently.

"Doesn't get easier does it?" he asked.

"No," Steph said honestly. "But you get stronger. Doesn't shrink, doesn't go away — you just grow around it. Like a tree growing around barbed wire. It's still there, cutting in sometimes, but the tree keeps growing anyway."

She looked at him directly now.

"What I'm saying is — she's not gone from you. She's just... distributed differently. In Tima, In every decision you make that's shaped by having loved her." She gestured at the mountain around them. "She's here. In this. In you choosing to climb when it would be easier to stay still."

Papa's eyes were wet, but he wasn't crying. Just letting it be there.