Monday came.

I arrived at eight in the morning with a bag that held everything I needed for the week — I'd agreed to the live-in arrangement, which meant a room on the third floor with a window that looked over the back garden. The room was clean, freshly painted, with a bed and a dresser and a small desk and the specific quality of a space that had been prepared with care.

Caleb met me at the door.

He was in work clothes — he had a site meeting at nine, he explained, which was what architects called it when they needed to be somewhere a building was happening. He had the particular focus of someone fitting things together in his head while his body was still here.

"Rosie's in the kitchen," he said. "She's had breakfast. She'll tell you what the morning routine looks like — she's particular about it."

"I'll follow her lead," I said.

He held the door.

"There are things in the house I should tell you," he said. "About Lydia."

I waited.

"Her photographs are still up," he said. "Some of them. I've taken a few down but — I left the ones that mattered to Rosie. They're in Rosie's room and in the hallway." He looked at the floor, briefly. "She talks about her mother. Frequently. I'd rather you didn't redirect that."

"I won't," I said.

"And if she asks you questions I'd rather she ask me—"

"I'll let you know," I said. "And I'll tell her she can ask her dad."

He nodded.

"She's at pre-K from nine to one on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays," he said. "Home the rest of the time. I'm usually back by six but I'll text if it's later."

"I'll make sure we eat by five-thirty," I said. "She'll be hungry by then."

He looked at me.

"How do you know?" he said.

"Children get hungry by five-thirty," I said. "It's consistent."

Something in his expression shifted — not quite a smile, the precursor to one. He'd probably been listening to a lot of nannies not know things.

"Right," he said. "I'll see you tonight."

He left.

I closed the door.

I stood in the hallway of the house.

It was a good house. Old, the bones of it solid, the kind of Victorian that had been loved for a long time. The hallway had original wood floors, slightly worn, and a runner that had been there for years. There were photographs on the wall — the family kind, candid shots, the record of a life that had been happy.

I looked at them without letting myself look too long.

A woman I didn't know, red-haired, with the kind of smile that suggested she smiled easily. Caleb, younger than now, with the specific brightness that people had before grief entered the picture. And Rosie — Rosie as an infant, Rosie at two, Rosie at three, Rosie at every age she'd been so far — in the arms of this woman, on Caleb's shoulders, sitting in a garden.

I turned away.

Rosie was in the kitchen.

She was at the kitchen table with a bowl of something she'd apparently not finished, and a picture book, and the expression of someone managing their morning carefully.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello," she said. "I'm reading."

"I see that," I said.

"I'm almost at the good part," she said.

"I'll wait," I said.

I sat down across from her.

She read.

I waited.

She finished the page and closed the book with the satisfaction of someone completing something.

"The good part was the part where the fox was wrong," she said.

"Was he wrong about something important?" I said.

"He thought the rabbit had taken his thing," she said. "But the rabbit didn't. The rabbit was just looking." She folded her hands. "Looking isn't taking."

"No," I said. "It isn't."

She looked at me.

"What's your middle name?" she said.

"Cecile," I said. "My mother's name."

"Wren Cecile," she said. "That's good."

"Thank you," I said.

"My name is Rose Lydia," she said. "Rose for roses and Lydia for my mom." She paused. "My mom died."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."

"She died in a car," she said. "That's what Dad says. A car accident." She looked at her book. "I know what an accident is. An accident is when something happens that nobody meant."

"That's right," I said.

"But it still happened," she said.

"Yes," I said.

She looked at her book.

"I told the other nannies about my mom," she said. "Some of them got very sad faces and tried to change the subject."

"I won't do that," I said.

"Why not?" she said.

"Because you're allowed to talk about your mom," I said. "Whenever you want. She was real and she loved you and talking about her is — it's a way of keeping her part of your day."

Rosie looked at her book.

"The one before you said it would get easier," she said. "She kept saying that. It's going to get easier."

"Did that help?" I said.

"No," Rosie said. "Because I didn't want easier. I wanted Mom."

I held the table.

"I understand that," I said.

She looked at me.

"Have you lost someone?" she said.

Four-year-olds were sometimes this direct.

"Yes," I said. "In a different way. But I understand what it's like when the person-shaped space is still there."

She considered this.

"Person-shaped space," she said.

"The shape of the person who isn't there," I said. "You can still feel it."

"Yes," she said, very quietly. "That's exactly it."

She looked at her book.

"My dad has it too," she said. "The person-shaped space."

"I know," I said.

"He doesn't say it like that," she said. "But I can see it."

"You're very observant," I said.

"Dad says so too," she said. "He says I see things."

She picked up her book.

"I want to show you the garden," she said. "After this. There are bulbs coming up. My dad planted them in October. He said they were for Mom, because she liked flowers."

"I'd like to see that," I said.

"I'll tell you all their names," she said. "I know most of them."

She went back to her reading.

I sat in the kitchen of the house where Rosie Mercer lived, in the kitchen that had photographs of Lydia on the wall and bulbs coming up in the garden and a four-year-old who knew the shapes of things precisely.

This was the house.

This was the work.

And somewhere inside me, the catch that I'd felt on Thursday was still there, and I was still not letting myself understand what it was.