looked at the framed deed above the table, then at Nora’s photograph beneath it.
“I kept it safe,” he whispered.
The house answered with its old familiar sounds: a pipe settling, the porch creaking, rain beginning again against the shutters.
For the first time in months, Martin did not feel alone inside those sounds.
He turned off the hallway light and went to bed, leaving the past where it belonged—not forgotten, not erased, but no longer holding the only key.