Suddenly it was morning. A spool of painful hours amidst endless agonizing days had unraveled around them, and yet here they were, bumping up against a new experience in this uncharted terrain. Janet didn’t remember falling asleep, but the soft rays were peeking through the blinds, replacing the deep charcoal sky she’d noticed when she last glimpsed the clock in her battle to surrender. She lay still under crumpled sheets, monitoring her husband’s breathing until the irregularity of his breath made it clear that he too was awake. Each waited for the other to acknowledge it. She felt for her husband’s hand under the blanket.

“He would have been seven today,” she said as she wrapped her fingers around his.

“He would have,” her husband agreed.

“I would have baked him a lemon cake with that sweet buttery frosting he liked.” They were silent for a moment under the sheets, thinking about a cake that would never rise, eggs that would never be cracked, butter that would never be whipped.

“Most children prefer chocolate or vanilla, but he liked lemon, didn’t he?”

“He did.” He gently squeezed her hand as he listened intently to her descriptions of previous cakes, buttercream roses, sprinkles, and the funny way Peter had of blowing out birthday candles. They had a few videos of him in better years, cheeks puffed, lips sputtering but watching them always felt like a faint shadow of the real thing. Maybe it would have been better not to film it, and to let the memory remain what it might have been before it merged with the virtual memory. On mornings like this one, revisiting these memories was indulgent, like sneaking out to a movie in the middle of the day, and they indulged each other in the rehashing and the creations of would-have-beens. It was only the two of them now, really. No matter how tearful friends and family had been, they couldn’t muster that level of interest in stories told over and over. One well-meaning friend had even suggested having another child, as if Peter had been a puppy or a housecat. Worse still were those who babbled on about their own children before suddenly gasping and drawing their hand to their mouth, all apology and remorse, as if they were responsible for preventing Janet from hearing about living children in the world. Almost as if they were reminding her with their stories. As if there were ever a moment that she wasn’t reminded.

They lay in silence again, only the sound of their own breathing distracting them. The sun shining through was now brighter.

“I guess we should face it,” Janet said. She felt a tinge of relief that this day, this day she’d been dreading for weeks, his would-have-been seventh birthday, had finally arrived. But as she pulled the covers back and lifted her legs out of the bed, a different set of covers, a draping of despair, pressed against her with the realization that this day would come again and again and again.