Quentin texted: Hayley is on the way up.

There was a knock on my door.

“Go away, I don’t want to see anyone.”

Hayley’s voice carried through the door. “We already established that I’m an asshole who doesn’t care what you want. You have to see me anyway, it’s in the ‘New Rules.’”

I was on my couch, shades drawn, ac full blast, watching Grey’s Anatomy and eating from a box of chocolate chip cookies. I glanced up at the piece of paper Hayley had stuck with a magnet to my fridge. It was headlined, ‘New Rules.’ Number one was ‘No one cares what you want, you have to see us anyway.’

Number two was, ‘You have to see someone every day. Or we break a window.’

Number three was, ‘Go see your grandmother at least every other day.’

Number four was, ‘Zach gets to cook for you every day or he’ll stop cashing his paychecks and Ben will starve.’

And so on for at least fifteen rules.

I called, “But today is an anniversary so the rules don’t apply.”

“No,” came Hayley’s voice, “that’s not true. The rules on anniversary days are not voided they are doubled. You have to see me, let me in.”

I said, “Fine,” in the most irritated voice I could muster and went and yanked the lock. Then I slammed the door open, up against the wall, huffed at her, and returned to the couch. “What do you want?” I stared at the Grey’s Anatomy episode again.

“Nothing.” She sat down beside me without closing the front door and started texting. I watched her peripherally and a moment later Emma and Zach came in through the front door.

I pulled my phone up and texted while saying what I was texting, “Quentin, you didn’t tell me I had these visitors. Worst security ever. You’re fired.”

He texted me back: Ha ha, nice try. I work for Magnus, you’re stuck with me.

Everyone sat down around me on couches and chairs, just looking at me, expectantly.

“Hey everyone, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

Hayley said, “As you know, and we know you know because you’re kind of being a bitch, it’s your anniversary today.”

I nodded, all their eyes on me. “I know.”

Hayley added, “You’ve been doing so well. I haven’t had to break out the ‘New Rules’ in months. I’ve been super proud of you, but I had a feeling today would be really hard so here we are.”

“I see that. You’re all here except Ben? He was too busy I suppose?”

Emma said, “Ben is taking a nap in our apartment. I have a monitor hooked up to my phone.” She waved her phone towards me so I could see Ben sleeping.

“Great, he’s the only one I really wanted to see.” I smiled a little. They were already lifting my mood, but I didn’t want to admit it.

Hayley said, “So Emma and I were talking about it the other day and we know what the problem is…”

“You guys were talking behind my back?”

“Jesus Christ, Katie, you’ve been the saddest case in the world for nine months. All we do is talk about you. When you go back to being a functioning human we’ll stop, I promise.”

“It’s my anniversary and…”

“Yeah, there’s a lot to get used to. But this is what we’re thinking, you’re ignoring your marriage to Magnus. It’s like you’re empty. You won’t talk about him, you aren’t reminding yourself about how happy he made you. You’re wallowing in what’s missing instead of remembering what you had with him.”

Emma said, “We don’t blame you, you lost the baby, you had to move, everything is boxed up, but we really think it’s time to remember Magnus. It’s your wedding anniversary and we’re all here to help you do it.”

My eyes flooded with tears. “It already sounds really painful.”

Zach said, “Yep, that’s why we're all here. And then we’re going to have a little feast in his honor.”

There was a knock on the front door. I yelled, “Come in!”

Quentin stuck his head in. “Katie, that is not how security works. Try again.” He closed the door and knocked.

“Anyone but Quentin can come in!” I yelled chuckling to myself.

Quentin came in with a stern glare. “I have one job and you do not make it easy.” He was carrying a box. He put it down in the middle of the room, went and locked my front door, and perched on the arm of the couch.

“What’s this?”

Hayley opened the flaps of the box. “First, we’re going to look at the photo and we’re going to admire it and then I was thinking we could hang it.” She pulled out the wedding photo of me and Magnus, the one where we were leaned back in our chairs after the feast. I had pulled it from the frame and given it to Magnus when he went to the past, but here it was, printed and in the frame again. It was passed through Zach, Quentin, and then to me. “You framed it for me again?”

“Emma did.”

“Thank you.”

“Remember when we took that? How scared you were?”

“I was. I was so scared. I married him without knowing anything about him.”

Emma said, “But you were also having fun together and laughing. I remember thinking you were going to be really happy together because it was so easy between you.”

I hugged the frame to my chest. “Okay.”

Hayley said, “Okay, we can hang it?”

“Sure, yeah, okay.” Tears streamed down my face. Zach went to the kitchen and pulled a hammer and a box of nails from under the sink. Everyone discussed where it should go and I didn’t have an opinion so they chose the empty wall at the end of the living room. The photo was small for the space but that was okay.

Hayley said, “Okay, next.”

She pulled out a box. It was clear glass soldered on the edges with a gold clasp. It looked beautiful and special. Inside was the red envelope with the letter from Magnus that he sent me through time. She passed it to Emma and she handed it to me. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I found that letter at the bottom of a cardboard box. You are the only person in the history of the world to have a letter passed to them through time by their three hundred-year-old lover. It belongs somewhere special.”

I sniffled and put the box on the coffee table.

“Is that it? That’s probably enough, right? I don’t know if…”

Hayley said, “We have two more things.”

She pulled a frame I had never seen before from the box. She held it for a moment and said, “Emma found the photo on your iCloud account. Don’t be mad at her. Promise.”

I squinted my eyes. I hated promising before I knew what it was. But I had never been mad at Emma before so I couldn’t imagine what would make me start. “I promise.”

She turned it around and I inhaled, a staggering inhale that caught twice in my chest. “Oh no.”

“I know it’s hard to look at, but we put it in this pretty frame and you can look at it in pieces, and then put it in a drawer. We just thought you would…”

I clutched it to my belly and looked down on it, the photo of Magnus kissing me while we smiled up, happy tears sparkling in our eyes. The morning we felt the baby move. The morning before I lost the baby. The morning before Magnus was gone forever. “If I only had a time machine to go back to that morning. I would tell myself to hold on to him harder.”

I clutched it to my chest. “You said there was one more thing, I don’t know if I can take any more.”

Emma said, “This one is maybe the most poignant of them all, but also it’s different. It was Zach’s idea.”

Zach said, “I was thinking that soon. Not today. Maybe not even this year, but sometime, you would want to go to Scotland.” He was nervous and rubbed his hands up and down on his thighs sticking out at long angles from the chair. “That you would want to maybe look up Magnus’s history.”

My brow furrowed. “Like how he died?”

“I don’t even know if that information would be there, but we could go look. Maybe you’d have answers. I mean, we’d all have answers. I wonder about him, and I tried to Google it and…”

“We?”

“Yeah, we’d all go with you. We’d help you look.”

“We’d all go?” I was beginning to wonder if the tears would ever stop streaming from my eyes.

“Yes, all you have to do is ask and we’ll all go.”

Hayley pulled a stack of passports from the box and fanned them out. “Emma got all of our passports. You decide when you’re ready to go, but when you are, we’ll all get on the plane with you.”

“To Scotland, to see where Magnus…”

Hayley said, “Exactly, to see where Magnus…”

I was still clutching that frame and didn’t think I could let it go. “Okay. Thank you.”

I stared at the new photo while my four friends sat awkwardly looking at each other and me occasionally and away, mostly.

Then Zach said, “Phew, that was one of the hardest fucking things in the world. Now we need some alcohol and food pronto.” He stood and stretched. “Emma and I are hosting at our place.”

Quentin joked, “But your apartment isn’t as big.” Quentin, Zach and Emma all stood up to go, talking and joking.

Zach said, “It’s the exact same size. It’s a mirror image of this place.”

Hayley joked as they left, “It probably feels so small because there’s a baby screaming his head off in there all the time. Tell Ben to get his emotions under control, pronto. People are calling him a big baby.”

Zach said, “Yeah, yeah, see you in a few minutes, we have the alcohol.”

They left and Hayley came over and sat with me on the couch. I leaned my head on her shoulder. She leaned her cheek to my head. We sat quietly for a moment. She asked, “Did we do good?”

“Yeah, you did good. I might never ever ever forgive you, but you did good.”