Two sisters are distressed and disturbed by their father''s display of ''desperate, choking, terrified devotion'' to their mother as she lies dying in her bed. Time begins to heal the wounds inflicted by the loss, yet the sisters fear that their father may never recover. But as the ghost of his grief finally begins to relinquish its hold over the family home, the sisters are surprised to find that it is they who are totally unprepared for their father''s first steps into an unforeseen future.

Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read