My probation agreement didn’t help. There it suddenly was with its business end peering out, that big, boldCOMMONWEALTH OFMASSACHUSETTSin the upper left hard to miss. Like the mug shot in my medicine chest, I had meant it to be a truth in this box of truths, but it hurt in a different way from the others. It was a pollutant here, celebrating death far more than life. I saw that now. This was definitely not the place it should be.
“Move it,” Edward ordered in a low voice.
Grateful for the direction, I snatched the envelope up and flipped it into the darkness where the light of the small lamp couldn’t reach—and wasn’t there satisfaction in that? For the first time, perhaps, I was separating what didn’t belong from what did. That quickly, the green velvet box was pure.
One deep breath of gardenia had me fully back, and though the hole inside me remained, it, too, seemed more pure. Needing to be with my baby again, I moved aside the shot of Lily’s wall graffiti to unearth pencil sketches I had made of her, and crayon drawings she had made of us. Under the layer of drawings were formal photos from preschool in which she looked stiff and photo-booth strips in which she looked irreverent. Edward chuckled at the last from my shoulder—but then there was Bunny! Tucked in at the side of the box, she was tiny, not much bigger than my hand, and oh-so-well-loved. There was a piece of the sleeper Lily had outgrown, but still cuddled. There was the ugly rubber rose barrette and a six-inch rendition of Sophia the First. She had loved both the barrette and Sophia, who debuted on TV less than a year before her death.
And there was a baggie. Victorious, I held it up. “First haircut,” I crowed. “I took off two inches and thought I would die.”
I stroked the hair through the plastic, then pressed it between my thumb and finger, as if holding it tightly would make it more mine. Her hair was real. It was part of her body in ways that the documents I found next—birth certificate, medical records, preschool papers—were not. But I had no sooner begun lifting them out when what I saw beneath stopped me cold.
“Her wish box,” Edward said in a hushed voice.
I panicked. Oh, I had known it was there. I had packed it in myself, deliberately placed where Lily’s things ended and my grandmother’s began, and, knowing it was safe, I had pushed it from mind. That was where it had stayed, out of mind until now.
Lily and I had made it together. Since Nana’s box was long and narrow, so was this one, but on a miniature scale, and rather than being green velvet, it was clay. I had done the basics, trueing up the sides and making sure the lid was snug, but Lily had added fingerprints and thumb spots, and splashes of color, a bird of sorts, and three rabbits, all of which I’d topped off with a rainbow and stars. The idea, she excitedly told Edward after it was glazed and fired, was that she could write anything she wanted and put it inside—wishes, secrets, notes to me or to him or to her friend Mia.
My tactic, of course, was to get her to write. But she hadn’t lived long enough to learn how, much less to fill the box with wishes, secrets, or anything else.
So I had filled it with her ashes.
My strength vanished. I could take photos, dolls, and beloved shreds of a sleeper, but not my daughter’s ashes. Granted, they were sealed in a bag. They might have been sealed in ten, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They were Lily in the flesh, or what was left of the flesh after the flames had done their thing.
In that moment, I would have done anything not to have cremated her. But the idea of her body lying alone in the ground had been way too brutal. I wanted her in a gentle, loving place, and she was, but even this was brutal.
Hurriedly, I tried to replace what I’d taken out so that the clay box was buried again, but it wouldn’t comply. Through a blur of tears, I mounded papers over it, and still it glared at me. I pushed it deeper, using both hands now to thicken the cover. When I could still see a corner, an edge, even a bright pink spatter, I thought to use my scarf to hide it. Desperate, I began tugging and yanking, nearly choking myself in my haste before an end finally came free.
From behind came Edward’s arms, his hands closing firmly on mine. “Stop,” he said in a broken voice.
Despite the warmth of him against my back, I couldn’t begin to think CALM thoughts. “I can’t—that box—I have to—”
“Shhh,” he whispered as he pulled my hands away from my neck, “shhh, baby.”
Twisting, I raised my eyes. His lips were a thin slash in his beard, his cheekbones severe over skin washed of color. And his eyes? Usually that startling pale-blue, they were flooded with grief.
Had he cried when Lily died? I couldn’t remember. Couldn’tremember. He must have, but with me? Possibly not, if he had wanted to keep a strong front. And then there was the public spectacle that our daughter’s death had quickly become.
Edward was strong. There had been arrangements to make, and I was useless. I knew he grieved; I had seen it etched on his face, ever more deeply as the days without Lily dragged on. But tears? I don’t recall seeing tears. Had he cried when he was alone, which increasingly he had been, since I was emotionally gone?
When the criminal case exploded and his stoicism remained, I interpreted it as anger, and we had gone downhill from there. I wondered now if I had been wrong. I wondered if stoicism had been Edward’s own personal form of anguish.
If so, that had changed. Here in my little cabin, with the velvet box open and the remains of Lily’s life laid out, it wasn’t my suffering versus his grief. We shared the sorrow now. For the first time, we were absolutely, totally together in this. For the first time, it wasn’t about how Lily had died, but the simple fact of her loss. Perhaps being apart had given us the space for this. Perhaps, over five years, our grief had taken its natural course, gradually evolving into something we could live with. Perhaps we were simply new people.
Whatever, his tears were my undoing. My own suddenly came in a torrent, gathering in my heart and erupting past my throat with such force that when they reached my eyes they had nowhere to go but out.Edward barely had time to turn me into him when I broke into gut-deep, soulful sobs. I had no control at all. Clutching handfuls of his black turtleneck, I held on for dear life, helpless to stop what was happening—not trying to—notwantingto. And that was okay. Because he was crying, too. I felt it in the convulsive way he held me, in the tremors that came from deep within him and the strangled sounds that escaped his throat.
For so long, I had kept this to myself. For so long,wehad. Now, finally, came relief.
***
I had no idea how long we stayed there. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that my mother waited, that Liam would be growing impatient, and that I had to think up some way to get Grace to a meeting with Ben. But when the tears finally slowed, I had neither the strength nor the desire to leave Edward’s arms. I was totally spent.
So we sat on the floor, me nested in the bend of his legs, saying nothing, just…being.I cleared my mind of negative thought, just settled into the here and now. Lily was before us, but it wasn’t as painful as it had once been.
In time, my mind wandered. One of my first, cohesive, non-Lily thoughts, was of clay. I felt a strong compulsion to feel, touch, shape. I needed to escape into it. I needed tocreate.
But that had to wait. When we finally separated, it was to neaten up the Lily-things in Nana’s box, close the lid, and slide the box back under the bed. We didn’t speak, but there was no anger in the silence between us. Rather, I felt an unexpected calm where Lily was concerned. And where Edward was concerned? Shared tears had cemented a bond.
Over the last days, I had sensed that things would never go back to how they were before he had come. For the first time, now, I realized that I didn’t want them to. I did love him. I did want him in my life.
