I felt awkward with my hands empty as I stood at the front door. The property was beautiful. A nice-sized house in a perfect neighborhood. The streets were lined with trees, everyone’s lawn looked immaculate, and the sound of a lawnmower rumbled in the distance under the spitting sound of a sprinkler. There were kids’ toys scattered across the yards, too. A bike tipped over. A tricycle left stranded. A soccer ball.

A really nice neighborhood for Adley to grow up in. She could ride her bike without a care in the world. Make a ton of friends. There were signs for the school saying it was nearby.

The door opened, and Michelle put a hand over her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears, and she stepped back. She put her other hand out, needing a few seconds.

It was still fresh. Because of how she saw me, I would forever be that reminder of Mila. That was why I stayed the hell away.

“I’m sorry,” Michelle whispered.

“I can go,” I said. “I don’t want anyone upset.”

“No,” she said. She reached for me. She grabbed my wrist. “Osiris. No. It’s good to see you. It’s…I felt like I lost you both. Now you’re here.”

I swallowed hard. “Right.”

“Here. Come inside.”

I stepped into the house.

Dane owned his own construction company, so it was no surprise that they lived in a big house and a house that he probably had built from the ground up. A grand foyer with a huge staircase swept up to the hallway of the upstairs.

I walked to the steps and touched the railing. I could almost see the Christmas stockings hanging there. I looked to my left and saw the large living room and the large stone fireplace, and it made me smile.

“Adley’s happy here,” I said.

“Yeah,” Michelle said. “She’s a good kid, Osiris. So good. So smart. Sassy as hell, though. Reminds me of Mila.”

I nodded. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, Michelle.”

“You’re going to come into the kitchen and have a cup of coffee with me.”

I walked to the kitchen, looking at pictures on the wall.

They were all of Dane, Michelle, and Adley.

It was hard to see. But it was a good thing to see.

This was home. This was family. This was what Adley deserved, after what happened.

In the kitchen, I took a seat at the marble countertop island while Michelle poured two coffees. She stood across from me, leaning against the counter. It was always funny to me that she and Mila had the same nose and same lips. But everything else was so different. Michelle’s eyes were lighter than Mila’s. Mila’s skin was a little darker. Mila was the wild child while Michelle had her life figured out at sixteen. She met Dane when they were seventeen, and they both never looked back. They walked the straight and honest path. Mila just floated around, living free, taking pictures, getting mixed up with me.

I gripped the coffee mug with no intentions of actually drinking any of it.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Michelle said.

“You weren’t going to give up, were you?” I asked.

“No. I’m not mad at you, Osiris. For anything. You did what you had to do. I would never…”

I put a hand up. “It doesn’t make anything right, Michelle. I owe you, Adley, your entire family an apology for what I did.”

“What you did?”

“Before it all happened. I wasn’t there. I was lost in another world. All I did was work.”

“You owned your own company, Osiris. I go through the same thing with Dane. I never know when he’s coming home. Or what the weekends will be like. It’s just the way it is. It’s life.”

“Not like this,” I said. “I bought that damn cabin hoping to save us. She was pulling away from me. I didn’t want to lose her and Adley. But I did anyway, in the worst way possible.”

“Well, you didn’t lose Adley,” Michelle said. She backed up and opened a drawer. She took out a piece of paper and unfolded it. It was white construction paper with the scrawled drawing only a four-year-old could make look good. “Every now and again, she’ll come up with this stuff, all proud.”

I looked at the picture.

“That’s Adley,” Michelle said.

She pointed to a drawing of a girl with pig tails, holding a puppy.

“I see that,” I said. “She has a dog?”

“No,” Michelle said. “She wants one.”

I smiled. There was another picture. Of a big garage. Then another person standing there in a sleeveless shirt with tattoos down his arms. It was me. I stood there holding some tools, with made-up parts all around me.

“She wanted to draw you,” Michelle said. “She remembers the shop. The welding. The noises. The sparks. She tells people her Daddy works with fire. Like a dragon.”

I looked at Michelle, my heart crushed. “Daddy?”

She nodded. “She doesn’t understand a whole lot, Osiris. I haven’t talked to her about much. Neither has Dane. I don’t even know where to start. She’s probably too young. But she knows what she knows. She remembers you.”

“She only called me that a few times,” I said. “Mila and I weren’t sure how to handle it. It was a big deal. I mean, for Mila, she had to trust I wouldn’t hurt her or Adley. Which I wouldn’t. But I would never pressure either of them to make Adley call me anything.”

“I know that,” Michelle said. “Mila used to tell me about it all the time. How good you were to her and Adley. That it seemed impossible.”

I put the drawing down. “What about at the end?”

“Osiris, it doesn’t matter.”

“To me it does,” I said.

“She was excited about the cabin.”

“Of course she was. Hippie.”

Michelle snorted and laughed.

I laughed.

Michelle wiped the corners of her eyes. “I get what you did, Osiris. It hurt so much when they said they were going to stop looking for her. I remember sitting in the living room with Dane. He got so angry. The detective stood up and told Dane to focus on me and Adley. Then he left. And then it was over.”

I looked down. “It wasn’t over.”

“I know that, Osiris. They did all they could.”

I looked at Michelle. There were tears in her eyes. She slowly reached across the island for me. Her fingertips touched mine.

“You did all you could,” she whispered. “I know you stayed up there searching for her. I’m sure you still look for her.”

“I just want to know what happened.”

“You know what happened,” Michelle said. “She pushed too hard and…”

“What?” I asked. “Fell? If she fell, where did she end up? It wasn’t a fucking cliff to the end of the world. I went down that ridge plenty of times on my own. So, what happened? Huh? Did she flake out and walk away from the car? Leave Adley sitting in the backseat with the car running? She fall somewhere else? Even still…what happened? An animal got her? Seriously? I’m supposed to buy that? And if so, what animal’s capable of that…so close to Adley?”

“You don’t think I’ve thought all that myself?” Michelle asked. “I get sick when I think about it. Six months after she was gone, I got so violently sick, Dane thought I was pregnant. I went to the doctor, and she sent me to a specialist for my stomach. Thought I had ulcers, maybe cancer. But it was just stress. Mental stress. I had to go see another doctor to help stop thinking about it.”

“You gave up,” I said.

“No, Osiris. I didn’t give up. I accepted it. I looked to Adley and knew I had to accept it.”

“Right. Because I fucked up.”

“You didn’t fuck up, Osiris.”

“Yes, I did,” I growled. I stood up. “I could have gotten my lawyers to fight back. So that I had a chance to have Adley.”

“Is that what you-”

“But I just let her go. I let it all go.”

“Osiris, stop,” Michelle said. “I didn’t want you here to get upset.”

“Of course not.”

“I just wanted you to know you’re not alone. Whatever you’re going through, I’m not here to judge you. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with Adley. When she draws these pictures and asks for you, I can’t stomach telling her you’re not around. I don’t want her to grow up thinking she lost her parents.”

“You’re her parents now,” I said. “You and Dane.”

“No, we’re not. We’re going to raise her. We’re going to love her. She’s our miracle, Osiris.” Michelle bit her lip for a second. “I found out I can’t get pregnant. Okay? There’s something just wrong. So having Adley is…a miracle. But I have to accept that she’s not my daughter. She’s my niece. I have to raise her like my daughter, though. We’re going to have a crazy kind of love.”

“Michelle, I’m not her father, either,” I said. “Some guy is. Some random guy who Mila gave her body to.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. She looked me dead in the eyes. It was the same kind of look Mila would give me when we’d argue over the dumbest shit. “Adley looks at you as her father.”

“So what, I’m supposed to help her understand her mother went missing on a mountain? And that, oh by the way, I’m not really your father. See, I should have just ignored the message, Michelle. I don’t want to hurt her. Confuse her.”

“If I thought for a second you were going to hurt her, you wouldn’t be in my kitchen right now.”

That shut me up for more than a second.

I stood there as Michelle walked around the island toward me.

She touched the thick scruff on my face. “You can try to hide behind this lumberjack look, but I know who you are. You’re the best thing that ever happened to my sister and Adley. And it’s all fucked up, Osiris. And it’s going to be fucked up for the rest of our lives. It’ll be the black cloud that never goes away. But that doesn’t mean we ignore it.”

“She was the best thing that ever happened to me,” I said. “I should have asked her to marry me the night I met her.”

“She would have been crazy enough to say yes.”

“And I would have followed through on it. I wished I would have gotten a lawyer and adopted Adley.”

“If that’s what stopping you from living life, Osiris, then let’s do it.”

“You just said you’re going to raise her.”

“We can all raise her,” Michelle said.

“No. I wouldn’t take that from you. She needs this life, Michelle. This house. This neighborhood. The school down the street. Normalcy.”

“I agree. But do you really want her to forget you?”

That question was like a two-ton rock on my chest.

It was a question that had two answers and both answers made sense.

“I did what I did to find Mila,” I said. “They gave up. I didn’t. You accepted it. I didn’t.”

“What about now, Osiris?”

“I still look for her.”

“You know how irrational that is, right?”

“She was the love of my life.”

“She was my sister.”

“Maybe I don’t know how to just move on. Because when you think of all that could have-”

Michelle reached back and grabbed the drawing off the island. “This. This is what you need to think about. This drawing. The way Adley sees the world. We’re the fucking adults, Osiris. We’re supposed to protect her from the darkness.”

“For how long?”

“As long as we can,” Michelle said. “And when that darkness creeps in, we have to be there to help get through it.”

She was right.

I slowly nodded.

Michelle could have hated me. She could have judged me. She could have written me off the way I wrote the world off. But in reality she had to bear something so big by herself. No parents to lean on. She had to come to terms that her little sister went missing on a mountain while trying to take a picture. She had to come to terms that her little sister went out and got pregnant by some guy who didn’t want a thing to do with her. She had to come to terms with me shutting the world out after Mila went missing. She had to come to terms with raising Adley after being told she could never have a baby of her own.

For everything in my mind and heart, Michelle should have hated me. Been mad at me. She should have slapped me across the face. Kneed me in the balls. Screamed, spat, clawed at my face.

She didn’t. She stood there. Calm, poised, perfect.

“I reached out to you,” I said, “because I found…”

The door to the kitchen opened.

There stood Dane.

He was in a dark blue t-shirt and work jeans with heavy boots.

He looked at Michelle.

He looked at me.

“Dane…wait a second-”

Those four words were all Michelle were able to speak.

All that talk about hate and judgement?

That didn’t apply to Dane.

He made fists and came after me.