What Came Next
What came next was not a clean recovery.
Lukas saw a doctor that week. The doctor talked to Lukas alone, then to Pia's mother, then to all of them together. The doctor used the word *depression* with great care, the way you use a word that the person hearing it has been afraid of. Lukas did not flinch. He almost looked relieved, Pia thought, that someone had named it.
The doctor talked about therapy. About talking to the school. About — possibly, with time — medication. About sleep. About the things people do for someone who has been living in a fog: not too many big plans, just small consistent kindnesses, day after day after day.
Lukas began to see a therapist. Mrs Holm — a kind, slow-spoken woman who saw him on Wednesdays after school. He took the rest of the school year off the most pressured exams. The school, when asked, was understanding. He would re-sit in the autumn. The world did not end.
The family changed shape, quietly. Pia's mother came home from work earlier on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Pia's father started cooking — actually cooking, properly — three nights a week, because, he said, *it gives me something to do with my hands.* Pia, who had been a noticer all her life, became a more deliberate noticer. She made it her job — not Lukas's job, not anybody else's — to notice the small good moments and to mark them, lightly, when they happened. *You laughed today,