By the time we got everything under control—alarm silenced, eggs scraped into the trash, windows open to air out the kitchen—we were both laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“This is a disaster,” Jack said, staring at the ruined pan.
“This is perfect.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressed my face against his bare chest. “This is exactly perfect.”
He held me there in the kitchen that smelled like burnt eggs and victory, and I thought about how far I’d come from that girl who couldn’t get out of bed, who couldn’t eat, who couldn’t imagine feeling anything except grief.
I was here. I was happy. I was winning awards and adopting dogs and burning breakfast with the man I loved.
The award ceremony was in two weeks, but today I had somewhere else to be.
Jack drove me to the cemetery without me having to ask. He just knew—the way he’d started knowing things about me over the past six months. When I needed space. When I needed company. When I needed him to hold me while I cried and when I needed him to make me laugh until I forgot why I was sad.
We’d gotten good at this. At being together. At building a life that made room for grief without being consumed by it.
Meatball came with us because leaving her home meant coming back to destroyed furniture and guilt-inducing sad eyes. She sat in the backseat with her head out the window, ears flapping, living her best life.
“You want me to come?” Jack asked when we pulled into the cemetery.
“Give me ten minutes?”
“Take as long as you need.” He squeezed my hand. “We’ll be here.”
I grabbed the roses from the passenger seat—white—and walked through the grounds alone.
Spring had arrived while I wasn’t paying attention. The trees were blooming. The grass was that impossible green that only happened for a few weeks before summer burned it brown. Everything smelled alive.
My grandmother’s headstone was simple.
Margaret Anne Wells
Beloved Grandmother
I knelt on the grass, set the roses against the stone, and took a breath that hurt less than it used to.
“Hi, Grandma.”
The wind rustled through the trees. A bird sang somewhere close by. The world kept moving, the way it always did, indifferent to loss.
“I’m getting married next month,” I said—conversational, like we were sitting in her kitchen over tea. “Jack proposed onthe anniversary of the day we met in college. He had this whole speech planned—I could tell because he kept forgetting words and starting over—and I said yes before he finished because I couldn’t wait anymore.”
I traced her name with my finger. The stone was warm from the sun.
“He’s good to me. You’d like that. He makes me coffee in the morning even though he’s terrible at mornings. He adopted a dog with me whom he absolutely adores. He holds me when I miss you so much I can’t breathe, and he doesn’t try to fix it. Just stays.”
A tear slid down my cheek. I let it fall.
“I won an award. For the Tucker story. Remember I told you about that interview? How nervous I was?” I laughed, wet and thick. “You told me I was going to be brilliant. You were right. You were always right about me, even when I didn’t believe it.”
More tears now—the good kind. The kind that felt like release instead of drowning.
“I’m happy, Grandma. I’m actually, genuinely happy. And I know you’d tell me that’s what you wanted—that you didn’t raise me to spend my life mourning you. But I miss you anyway. Every single day. I see something funny and reach for my phone to call you. I have good news and my first thought is telling you. You’re just… everywhere. In everything.”
The wind picked up. The roses I’d brought shifted slightly, their petals catching light.
“Jack’s waiting in the car. Probably entertaining Meatball—that’s our dog, I told you about her last time. Golden retriever. Absolute chaos. She ate my favorite shoes last week and looked so guilty I couldn’t even be mad.” I stood slowly, brushing grass from my knees. “I’m going to marry him next month. I wish you could be there. I wish you could see it. But I think… I think youknew. In the hospital, when you put our hands together. You knew this was coming.”
I pressed my fingers to my lips, then to the headstone.
