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"She did it!" I grabbed Alex's arm. "Alex, she did it!"

He was already standing, both hands on the back of the seat in front of him, leaning forward like he might climb over it. "That was the move. Did you see her feet? That was the outside edge."

"I saw."

Hazel's head came up from the pile. She searched the stands, her face flushed and wild under her helmet. When she found us, she pointed her stick at Alex and grinned. The grin said everything. I did it. You taught me. I did it.

A year. It had been a year since my daughter's school play needed a princess and I said yes because Hazel was looking up at me with pool noodle branches strapped to her arms and I couldn't say no. A year since Alex Holloway walked into that auditorium in his turnout gear and kissed me on stage like he'd forgotten there were two hundred people watching.

A year of Saturday mornings at the rink and the walk to the coffee shop afterward, three chairs at our booth, same order every week. A year of Alex cooking by the recipe and me reaching past him to add what it needed. A year of arguing over where the baskets went, because I put baskets where the clutter landed and Alex wanted the apartment to look like a magazine, and we met somewhere in the middle the way we met in the middle on everything.

I couldn't remember the life Hazel and I lived before him. I knew it existed. I knew we'd been fine, the two of us, in the apartment with the locks and the silence and the careful, measured distance I kept from everyone. But the shape of it was gone. Alex had filled the space so completely that the version of us without him felt like a story someone had told me about two other people.

"Look at you!" Jody leaned over the counter. "Is that a medal? Let me see."

Hazel held it up with both hands.

"Jody! We won the tournament!"

"I always knew you would." Jody wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "And because you chose to celebrate here, everything's on the house today."

"Really?" Hazel looked up at me.

I nodded.

"Thank you, Jody!"

She plated the shortbread and the empire biscuit without asking which one, because she already knew it was always both when it mattered. She started on our coffees and Hazel's hot chocolate, extra whipped cream, the same order she'd been making us every Saturday for over a year.

I caught Jody's eye across the counter. She waved me off before I could say anything. "Can I ask you something? Would it be okay if I put her photo up on the community board?" She nodded toward the corkboard by the door, the one covered in local flyers and kids' drawings and a faded photo of someone's dog. "A tournament champion. That's a milestone. She belongs up there."

"Of course."

I heard myself say it, and I meant it, and the ease of it still surprised me.

We took our booth, the one with the cracked leather seat by the window. The older woman with the gray braid was in her spot with her crossword, the same pen. She waved at Hazel when we sat down. Hazel waved back with the empire biscuit already in her other hand.

"Do they have hot chocolate in Scotland?" Hazel asked.

"They do."

"Is it the same as here?"

"Probably not. Different country, different recipe."

Hazel considered this. "I want to try everything. I want to try their hot chocolate and their food and I want to walk around the castle and I want to hear what they sound like when they talk."

She'd been like this all year. Every trip we took, she wanted to taste it and touch it and talk to strangers about it. Lisbon in the spring, where she ate pastéis de nata for three straight days and came home with a notebook full of drawings of the tile walls. The beach in July, where she collected shells and labeled each one with the date and the exact spot where she found it. D.C. in October, where she stood in front of the triceratops at the Smithsonian and announced, with complete authority, that she had been right about dinosaurs all along and would not be taking questions.

She got that from her mother. The wanting to see everything. She got the labeling and the organizing from Alex.

Alex, who was sitting across from me, stirring his coffee with a quiet smile while my daughter planned her invasion of Scotland. He was not the man I'd met at that school play. That man had walked into the auditorium like he owed his sister a debt and intended to pay it as quickly as possible. This man had booked our flights to Edinburgh in September. He'd made a spreadsheet. He was the one who texted Erin on Thursdays to ask if she and Colin wanted to do something over the weekend, and he had no idea that his sister had been waiting months for that text.

He was lighter and he laughed with his whole face now, instead of half of it.

"Alex," Hazel said. "Does New Year's look different in Scotland?"

Hogmanay in Edinburgh was everything Alex had promised.