He considered that with my knuckles to his mouth, then breathed against them. “I don’t know. I struggle to find an explanation for what happened, and He’s all I get.” He looked sharply at me. “Don’t you ever think that?”
I didn’t. I was still angry at Him. But I tried to hear Edward. “You’re saying we should be grateful for the five years we had.”
“Yeah, I’m saying that. When we lose someone we love, we can either die with them or live on to celebrate their life. I’m tired of focusing on what we lost, Maggie. I want to focus on what we had.”
I was about to argue that five years wasn’t enough, that Lily had been a key part of our future, and what aboutherdreams—when I heard his words—and even then, it was another minute before they fully registered. When they did, though, they went straight to the soul of the person I was trying to become. He was talking about the photographs neither of us could put on a desk. Or nightstand or bookshelf. He was talking about the memories I had so fiercely locked away. He was talking about the samethings my therapist had, until I got tired of failing at it, and stopped seeing her.
And where was I now? My ex-husband had stolen back into my life, my brother was occupying my loft, and my mother had become my responsibility. The past was crowding in. It was unexpected and, in many regards, daunting. And yet, there was something good about having family again.
If Lily wasn’t part of it, she was forgotten. I couldn’t let that happen.
In that instant, urgency hit—like I had wasted too much time and was suddenly on the verge of irrevocably losing her. Pulling my hand free, I dashed out of the car and ran through the drizzle to the house. Liam must have let Jonah out before he left, because the dog stayed inside, craning his neck on my thigh when I dropped to my knees and buried my face in cat fur. I felt like it had been a year since I’d been home, not twelve hours.
But I couldn’t linger here, either. These three were my babies, but they weren’t the only ones. Dropping my coat on the newel post as I passed, I was on the stairs when I heard Edward enter the house, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t stop until I was on my knees on the floor by the bed and had pulled out my grandmother’s green velvet box.
I wavered then. There was pain in this box. I had kept it closed these four years not because I didn’t want to see Lily; wasn’t she with me in the dark most nights? But the physical somethings from her life, held in this box, were actual, touchable proof that she was gone. I hadn’t been ready.
I wasn’t sure I was now. But the past seemed destined to pop up, and focusing on loss was limiting. I agreed with Edward. I wanted to focus on the joy my daughter had brought. I did not want to lose her,couldnot lose her.
Touching the latch, I felt a spark and pulled my hand back fast. Not only grief, I told myself. Beauty, too. I reached out again, but hesitated. Fisting my hands on my thighs, I rocked back and forth, near the box and away, near and away. Then I raised my eyes. Edward stood at the door with his shoulders slumped, seeming as lost as I felt. And suddenly I couldn’t do this alone.
“Help me?” I begged softly.
The question was barely out when he came forward, as though he had been waiting, as though he understood that a mother’s grief—or joy—was different from a father’s, as though he understood that I wasn’t yet ready to make the commitment to him that he was to me but that, in matters of Lily, we were together.
On the floor, in the light of my bedside lamp, the green box seemed etched in amber. He hunkering down and eyed it. “In there?”
I nodded. Reassured by his nearness, I slipped the latch and raised the lid.
The smell hit first. It was my grandmother’s trademark gardenia, conjuring summer and age. Though pale in comparison to the woman herself, it had defied the years by clinging to her letters, to the sepia portraits of her parents and the sketches she had done of my mother as a child, of flowers and friends and the dogs she had loved and lost. I didn’t see these things now, though. They were simply a nest for my daughter.
At my shoulder, Edward’s breath tripped, because there she was looking up at us—Lily Reid Cooper, all blond-white hair, silver-blue eyes, and impish mouth, as real as ever. My chest tightened until he leaned closer. “We can do this,” he said, and although his voice held a quiver, it was determined.
Only then did I realize that this was hard for him, too, and suddenly, being together had greater meaning. He needed me as much as I needed him.
Gratified by that thought, I picked up one photo. “How beautiful she is,” I whispered and, emboldened by that first view, set it aside and went to the next.
“Look at her here,” Edward said, holding another. It was taken by one of Lily’s playgroup moms, who had thought it so special that she’d had it printed. The occasion was a birthday party, the setting a princess bounce house. The camera caught Lily mid-air, her hands and legs askew, her expression the embodiment of glee. She was three at the time.
We had hundreds—no,thousandsof digital shots. Most of thesephysical prints were copies of those we had either given to grandparents or put on our family room wall. I held up one of her grinning around a roasted marshmallow, Edward held up one of her scowling in time-out. I spotted one of her with Edward and pushed others aside to reach it, while he dug out one of her on her brand new, training wheel–less, five-year-old’s bike.
I might have recalled that when she died, we donated that barely used bike to charity, if I hadn’t just then spotted my old phone—not the one the police had confiscated, but the one I’d bought to replace it. We had always backed up to the Cloud, so restoring pictures had been a cinch. Not so easy? Reliving them. So I had packed away the phone, too.
Taking it in my palm now, I turned it on. Naturally, after all this time, it was dead. I nearly wept at that alone.
“We can charge it,” Edward quickly offered when he saw the tears that hung, just hung on my lower lids. “I have them on my phone, too, but I haven’t been able…” His voice cracked. Abandoning the thought, he returned to the box and lifted a photo of the three of us that had been taken by a professional photographer when Lily was one.
Blinking it into focus, I smiled. “She does not look happy here. Remember?”
“Oh yeah.” I heard his grin. “Tantrum city. Did not want her picture taken.”
“She didn’t like her hair,” I joked.
“What hair?”
“Exactly. Poor thing. It was late coming in, but the wait was worth it.” I wondered whether that gorgeous white-blond silk would have darkened at ten, as mine had. And at eleven, twelve, or thirteen? Even beyond hair, I wondered how puberty would have treated her nose, her skin, her moods.
Rather than tightening up, my chest was suddenly empty, like a huge hole had opened where the future should have been. New tears welled but didn’t spill. The purpose of this was to celebrate the life we’d had, not the one we’d lost.
