My name is Claire. I’m forty-eight years old.

Daniel and I met at a friend’s Fourth of July barbecue when I was twenty-three. He was standing by the grill, trying to flip burgers with a pair of salad tongs because somebody had lost the spatula. Half the burgers were on the ground. He looked so serious about it.

I walked over and said, “You know those are for salad.”

He looked at the tongs. Then at me.

“I’m improvising,” he said.

“You’re failing,” I said.

He laughed. A big, surprised laugh. And he handed me the tongs.

I flipped the rest of the burgers. We talked the whole time. Then we talked for the rest of the night, sitting on the back steps, while everybody else watched the fireworks.

We were married two years later.

He was an architect. He designed schools, mostly. Elementary schools and libraries. He had a way of looking at a building like it was a puzzle he was trying to solve. He’d stand in a doorway for ten minutes, just looking at the light coming in through the windows.

He was quiet. Not shy. Just quiet. He thought before he talked. He listened.

He had terrible jokes. The worst jokes you’ve ever heard. Puns, mostly. He told them with a completely straight face, and then he’d wait, and when you groaned, he’d smile like you’d given him a present.

He sang in the car. Off-key. Loudly. To everything. Jazz, mostly. He loved old jazz. Every Sunday morning, he’d put on a record, Miles Davis or Chet Baker or Ella Fitzgerald, and make pancakes for the whole family.

Emma was born when I was twenty-eight. Josh came two years later.

Wait. I’m getting that backward. Josh was first. Josh is the older one. He’ll be furious if he ever reads this.

Josh was born when I was twenty-eight. Emma came two years later.

Every Sunday morning, from the time they were old enough to sit at the table, Daniel made them pancakes. Josh wanted blueberries. Emma wanted chocolate chips. Every single Sunday. Chocolate chips.

“Emma, you can’t have chocolate chips every week,” I’d say.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s basically cake.”

“So?”

And Daniel would look at me over the stove with a little smile and drop a handful of chocolate chips into the batter.

We were happy.

I want to say that clearly. I want to be honest about it.

We were happy for a long time. Not perfect. We argued about money sometimes. About whose turn it was to take out the trash. About whether Josh should be allowed to play tackle football. About Daniel working too late on deadlines.

But we were happy.

Then my mother got sick.