The stone lived in every house Dan's father occupied. It was too rough for an ornament and too small to serve as a doorstep. After the funeral, Dan found a note beneath it: from the wall we did not finish.
He contacted a former quarry colleague expecting a story about a failed building project. The wall had belonged to a community garden. Work stopped when the land was sold, and each volunteer kept a small piece of the stone already cut. His father carried an unfinished shared undertaking rather than a professional achievement.
Dan visited the replacement garden opened years later on another site. Its caretaker invited him to add the stone to a low border, provided its history was recorded without claiming it came from the current wall.
He placed it near the gate and left a copy of the note in the garden records. At home, the windowsill looked oddly empty. For the first time, the stone belonged to something finished enough for people to use. His father's sentence remained true, but it no longer required the object to spend another generation waiting inside a house.