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Charlotte pulled a few bills from her wallet, setting them on the table she stood, still holding Ali’s hand.

“Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”

Ali didn’t hesitate. She wiped her cheeks as she rose, letting Charlotte guide her out of the restaurant.

Charlotte kept their hands linked the entire drive home, thumb brushing in steady, soothing arcs along Ali’s knuckles. When the garage door opened, warm waning light spilled across concrete.

With a quiet breath, Charlotte guided Ali to one of her most prized possessions. Her father’s 1991 Porsche 911. She could still remember the day he brought it home, the smile on his face, captured in the picture that rested on her mantle. The breadth of that memory confined to the edges of that photo, the details lost to time.

An ache of understanding urged her along to comfort Ali the only way she knew how.

Charlotte circled the shimmering horizon-blue car to the passenger side, opening the door with reverent care. She tilted her head.

“Get in.”

Ali stepped closer, grief and wonder flickering in equal measure across her face as she climbed in.

The engine started up without fuss, a familiar steady hum vibrated beneath Charlotte’s skin. She eased the Porsche out of the garage and onto the quiet road, turning not toward the city but the winding country backroads she’d known since childhood.

She switched the radio to a station that played classic rock, her father’s old favorites. Guitar and smoky vocals filled the car, threading through the dusk as she drummed her thumb against the steering wheel in perfect time. Just like her father used to do…

“This was my dad’s car. He loved it. I have always liked knowing how things work. Most weekends, I helped him tinker with it. I’d sit in the passenger seat and do my homework until I got stuck. Then he’d talk me through it.”

The car hummed over the first long curve in the road, and Charlotte’s posture went loose. These backroads always cleared her head, like motion alone could clean away anything that didn’t belong.

“We’d always end those days with a drive like this,” she said. “Windows down. Music loud. Just the two of us.”

Ali listened without interruption, her fingers tracing patterns on the underside of Charlotte’s arm that rested on the gear shift.

“When he died,” Charlotte continued, “this car became my secret place. The place I felt safest and closest to him.”

Another gentle turn and the countryside opened around them, the landscape bathed in the fading hue of evening.

“I was seventeen the first time I forgot,” Charlotte admitted. “I came downstairs for school and my mama looked so sad. When I asked her what was wrong, she gave me this look and asked me if I remembered what day it was.” She took a steadying breath, but all those emotions came rushing back to the surface. “I broke… It took her ages to calm me down.”

“I’m sorry,” Ali murmured.

Charlotte shook her head. “Don’t be. I’m telling you because I don’t want you to think it means something is wrong with you. Or that you loved her any less.”

Ali’s hand stilled on her arm.

“I’ll tell you what Mama told me.”

Ali squeezed her arm when she was ready.

“Grief is different for everyone. There isn’t a right way to heal. Sometimes, the wound closes so well you don’t feel the ache until something triggers it. Sometimes, it feels like slow motion, like you’re healing, then suddenly you’re not. And sometimes…” Her voice softened. “Sometimes forgetting the date is part of moving forward. Part of your heart remembering how to really beat again.”

Ali swallowed hard, throat bobbing as she leaned her head against Charlotte’s shoulder. Charlotte angled her chin and pressed a soft kiss into her hairline, breathing her in.

“There are years I forget completely,” she admitted. “And years I watch it creep closer like a storm. Lizzie feels it physically, a weight in her bones. Mama still cooks his favorite meals on their anniversary and his birthday. Some years, she even buys him little presents, just because she misses him.”

Ali let out a trembling exhale and nodded. Charlotte squeezed her hand tight as she kept driving, giving Ali a moment to sift through her emotions.

“I feel like she’s fading,” Ali whispered. “I barely remember her laugh. I can’t remember how she smelled. I lost all her recipes in one of my moves… All my memories of her are getting fuzzy and fragmented.”

A knot formed in Charlotte’s throat. She remembered that too, the slow erosion. Most of her father was preserved in the photos and old home videos her mother guarded like treasured relics. It broke something in her knowing there was no one to preserve those things for Ali. No backup memory. No archivist for her life before loss swept in.

“A lot has faded for me too,” Charlotte said, “But the important things stay. The way she loved you. The lessons she taught you. All the affection she wrapped you up in… those things never fade.”