Daniel was at the counter making coffee, smiling a small, easy smile. “How was the trip?”

“Fine,” I said. “Everything okay here?”

“Yep. Smooth sailing,” he said. “Checked on your mom a couple times. She was comfortable.”

I swallowed the taste of metal in my mouth and smiled back. Later the mattress was gone, the hallway bare as if it had never held anything but air. The blanket, the pillow—erased. I stood in that spotless space and understood something I think I’d understood for years but never named: some people clean a mess by hiding it.

I didn’t raise my voice. I brought a box into the living room and set it on the table. “I brought you something,” I said lightly.

He perked up the way he always does around gifts. He opened the lid, saw the stack of glossy photos—my mother on that thin mattress, the date and time stamped in the corner—and went still.