Sam’s first visit home for the holidays arrived considerably later in the year than either Lucien or Ezra had expected — not out of any absence of affection, but simply the particular, absorbing busyness of a first semester away, filled with new friendships, demanding coursework, and the countless small adjustments of learning to build an independent life for the first time.

They’d kept the house ready for him regardless, his room untouched aside from careful dusting, a stack of his favorite childhood books left deliberately on the shelf where he’d find them, small signs that the space he’d left behind remained exactly as welcoming as the day he’d departed, waiting...