I held the box in my hand. I stared down, frowning. I made myself a promise. A rule. Whatever you wanted to call it. The first few letters I wrote I took to Everly. I put them right there at the headstone. They were always gone. Of course. Wind blew them away. Maybe a bird took them to make a nest. Maybe the groundskeeper took them and threw them out or saved them. Who knows.

After the first few times I started to just keep them. She wasn’t going to read them either way. So I threw them into a box. Again and again and again. I kept that box hidden like a dark secret.

Nobody knew about it.

Until now…

I walked from the bedroom and went downstairs. As I passed by Sadie’s room I heard Emily’s voice as she read her a bedtime story. I couldn't even stop to listen. My heart was just tattered. Emily was doing Everly’s job and I wanted more than anything to know that it was okay. But the acceptance of it was solely on my soul.

And as I carried the box to the dining room table, it was all a part of the acceptance.

I put the box on the table and stood there, waiting for Emily.

“Okay,” Emily said as she walked through the living room. “Three books later, she’s relaxed. Now she just needs a kiss from her Daddy.”

Emily touched my back.

I stepped to the side and pointed to the box.

“What’s that?”

“My goodbye,” I said. “To Everly.”

“Oh,” Emily said.

“My way of coping was to write her letters. Tell her everything that was going on in my life. It was the only way to ease the pain enough to function.”

“Jake…”

“I want you to be able to read these if you want,” I said. “My way of moving on. Nothing hidden between us.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I know. But you gave me everything of you, Emily. And that means a lot to me. You trust me with your secrets, fears, doubts. So I’m trusting you with mine. Everything in these letters is as real and as raw as emotions can get. You don’t have to read a single one. But I want you to know they exist and they are always there for you to read. So if I get lost in the weeds or something, maybe these will help bring me back.”

Emily slipped her arms around me. “I love you, Jake. I feel so lucky to know you. To love you. To have you love me back. But I feel guilty sometimes of how it came to be.”

I hugged her and shut my eyes. “I know, Em. I feel the exact same.”

We were silent for a few seconds before I kissed the top of her head and broke away.

I had to go get Sadie finished up for the night.

Which was good.

I needed the innocence.

I walked into Sadie’s room and she was already asleep. That was a shock to me because she never fell asleep without five hugs, four kisses, three questions, two pillow flips, and one check for monsters in the closet.

But Emily had done it.

She had secured all of Sadie’s worries about the night and made her comfortable enough to just sleep.

I grabbed a princess book off the nightstand and tucked it away on the bookshelf. I walked to the fishbowl where the damn goldfish was still swimming around. I crouched and flicked the bowl. The fish jumped and swam in circles.

I looked around the room and took a deep breath.

Downstairs I had given Emily the last piece of the puzzle. What made me who I was. And if she could love me through the letters and the anniversaries, then she was… the one.

I never thought in my wildest dreams I would buy a second ring for a woman to wear but Emily was right there in my heart. I wanted to capture her for whatever was left of forever. It was amazing that the word forever meant something so different a handful of years ago than it did now.

I walked to the bed and leaned over Sadie. I kissed her cheek.

“I love you, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Sleep tight. I’ll see you in the morning.”

With every step I took from the bedroom I felt like things were changing. I had thoughts racing through my head.

Downstairs I found Emily standing where I left her. She hadn’t even touched the box of letters.

“Sadie okay?” she asked.

“Perfect,” I said. “You got her to sleep. Amazing. You’re amazing, Em.”

She shook her head. “Hardly.”

“You didn’t read anything?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t need to,” she said. “The gesture alone is more than enough, Jake. Those are your private words to your fiancée, Jake. I will never get in between that. Whatever you felt or still feel are your feelings.”

“How the fuck are you so perfect?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said with a grin. “I guess I just am.”

I laughed. I wrapped my arms around Emily and hugged her. I had to get rid of the box so Sadie didn’t see it and try to read anything. Someday I would give her that box and she could then read and make up her own mind on things. I never wanted to guide her mind one way or another even though I had done just that.

I had really fucked up.

So badly…

There was one more secret I hadn’t told Emily just yet.

* * *

Emily fell asleep in my arms. My eyes scanned the room. There was something fucked up about it. Being in the guest bedroom with the woman I loved. We were so close together. We had nothing but our love. In some ways that was the most perfect thing I had ever heard of in my life. We didn’t need a room, a place, decorations, all that shit. We just needed each other and whatever came with that.

I had the box of letters tucked away in the closet again.

I rolled Emily to her side and kissed her bare shoulder. Her skin smelled sweet. She tasted sweet. The room still lingered with the pleasured filled moans and lip biting cries that had been echoing around from what we had done just a little while before.

Reaching for the nightstand, I opened the drawer and reached into the back for the bottle of medicine. I stared at it. I thumbed the label. I looked at the date when the prescription was filled. The day I sat on the edge of the bed, unsure what to do with it. I never wanted to chase away the pain from losing Everly but I didn’t want to slip too far away from the world. One time Mickey told me I should just sell the house and start over. I even talked to a realtor and slowly started that process. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine not having the house where Everly was last alive.

I had been forever left with a horrible decision to make. Take the pills to ease my mind so I could live in the house. Or just sell the house and begin the process of forgetting Everly.

I said fuck off to both.

“Fuck off,” I whispered.

I put the medicine away and shut off the light.

I couldn’t sleep though.

I had to tell Emily what I had done with Sadie after Everly was gone.

To put it simply, I never told Sadie that Everly had died. She was too young then and maybe now she was still too young. Maybe she wasn’t. But each day I let it go was a day she got more and more confused. I let her believe whatever her beautiful mind wanted to believe. I told her that angels took Everly for a little while. I didn’t know how else to look down into her big innocent eyes and tell her the truth. Tell her that her mother was so tired that she may have messed up and ran a stop sign. That some guy with a drink or two in his system came flying down the street, speeding, and hit the car Everly was driving. Or that when the car was hit, it was flying through the air like a toy, spinning, only stopping when it hit a pole. Or maybe that the medical people didn’t know if Everly died on impact of the truck or the pole. All those grisly details flashed through my mind over and over.

So when it came time to face Sadie and talk about where Everly was, I simply told her that angels had to take her for a little while. I implied that Everly was coming back. And Sadie believed it. I knew it because I had heard Sadie more than once tell people that angels took her mom for a little while. There would come a day when I’d have to explain to Sadie that there was no coming back. That we’d have to keep Everly’s memory alive through our hearts. Or whatever other cliché bullshit I could think of to lessen the blow to Sadie’s heart.

Fuck.

Those heavy thoughts meant for a restless night.

At the first flicker of daylight through the curtains, I was awake and got out of the bed. I wasn’t sure if I even got a full hour of sleep.

I zombie shuffled down the stairs and into the kitchen to make coffee. I figured I would make breakfast too. Have something that resembled a big family gathering to try and ease the weight on my shoulders. The way I felt right then… well, I would normally make sure Sadie was cared for and then I’d skip work and get some ink done. When Everly died, I had a half sleeve on my arms and nothing else. Now the tattoos went down to my wrists and to my hands. I had tattoos on my chest, my back, my sides. To me, it was better than going to get drunk and do something stupid.

I stood there and watched the coffee drip.

Everything was changing. So fast, so wild, just the way life intended it to do.

But I was not prepared for what happened next.

“Daddy?”

I turned and saw Sadie standing near the kitchen, one hand rubbing her eye.

“Hey, sweetheart,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

Sadie looked me dead in the eyes. I realized she wasn’t holding Bo. Which was very odd.

“Daddy… Emily’s dead.”