Amber clings to me like she’s been holding all this inside for years. Maybe she has.
“I didn’t know you felt like that,” I whisper. “I should’ve known you felt like that.”
Her voice comes out muffled against my shirt. “I didn’t wanna make you sad.”
That sentence hits me harder than anything else. “You could never make me sad by talking to me, princess. I promise you that.”
Her sniffle breaks my heart as the bed bows with Knox perching at the foot of the mattress. “Really? You promise?”
“I promise promise.”
Lia shifts beside us, quiet and steady, her presence warm instead of intrusive. One of her hands rests lightly on Amber’s back, rubbing up and down her spine while we talk. Knox is perched at the foot of the bed, silent and watching with his own tears in his eyes.
I’m so glad they’re here to help me with this.
“I think about Mom a lot,” Amber admits softly.
“I do, too.”
She peeks up at me. “You do?”
I nod as I look down at my beautiful daughter who looks so much like Gloria. “Every single day. She loved you so much, kiddo. Do you know that?”
Amber studies my face like she’s looking for proof.
“And Lia’s right,” I say. I peek over at the wondrous woman that’s come into our lives before I look back at my daughter. “Mommy used to talk to her belly all the time when you were inside of her. She’d sing you songs and read you bedtime stories before we went to sleep.”
Amber’s eyes widen a little. “She did?”
“Oh yeah,” I say with a soft smile. “She’d sit on the couch and tell you about the world you were gonna see. About the beach and about the books she wanted to read with you. How she hoped you’d like music so we could dance around the house together.”
Amber sniffles. “What was her favorite song?”
I laugh quietly. “Oh, honey. Too many to count. I’ll make a playlist of all her favorite songs for you so you can listen whenever you want, how’s that sound?”
Her voice is muffled against me. “I’d like that, Daddy.”
Pickles shifts against Amber’s legs, settling his tail on top of my shin. The words flow easily, even though the tears do, too. I tell her about Gloria’s favorite vacation spot: Rodanthe, on the Outer Banks. I tell her about the day I met her mother, when wewere in high school and she was the new girl whose parents had just moved to town.
I tell her about how her mother used to snort whenever she’d belly laugh, and how she burned the pancakes she made every Saturday morning, but I still ate them anyway. I tell her about the time she cried when she first felt Amber kick, and how we’d lay there at night, wondering whose nose Amber would end up with.
“Whose nose do I have?” Amber asks.
I smile down at her. “You ended up with Mommy’s nose.”
She wiggles and scrunches it up. “Good. I like my nose. Yours is big.”
A teary laugh comes from Knox at the foot of the bed. I can only imagine the kinds of memories this kicks up for him.
Lia rubs Amber’s back through the entire conversation before Knox gets up and leaves. He mutters something about heating up Walker’s soup, and I watch Amber’s eyes start drooping.
I kiss her forehead as the two of us ease down into the bed—my little girl, so grown for her age, snuggling tightly against me like she always did during those first years.
“Think I’m still a little sick,” she says through a yawn.
I kiss her forehead again. “That’s okay, you rest.”
“But Knox said?—”
