Chapter Nine
"Where were you?"
Anger made Mhavrych's heart pound in his chest and his hands clench by his sides. He stalked up to Rilex, his eyes burning into the older man.
"Mhavrych…"
"You were supposed to be in the settlement. You were supposed to bring the stone. Kendra's still lying there. I can't wake her up."
"The stone wasn't there."
The words made a cold feeling rush over Mhavrych.
"What?"
"The stone, Mhavrych. It wasn't there. We found the remnants of the old well, but the ground was disturbed, long ago. If the stone was ever buried there, someone took it."
"But the body…"
"We think that we've uncovered who he is and what happened. But he didn't take the stone."
"How do you know?"
"Come with me."
"We need to go back for Kendra. We can't just leave her there."
"She's safe," Rilex said. "We need to do this first."
Mhavrych followed his father's best friend toward the infirmary. The body was lying on the table, his clothing restored to its proper position. Severine stood beside the table, what looked like an ancient book clutched to her chest. She was staring down at the body as if she didn't see bones, as if she could see the man that the skeleton once was. In that moment Mhavrych wondered just how much this woman had seen and experienced in her young life. The horror of what she had gone through was something that she would never fully recover from, but he knew that she was going to overcome it. She would rise above and be able to bring those who had suffered as she had along with her. The thought of how many times she had seen bones like this, the stripped-down remnants of what had been a person, and how much she had to convince herself to see not the remains, but the person, only emphasized her strength. When she did that, she was refusing to give Ryan any more power than he already had. He might have been able to create beings and then kill them without a second thought, but he would never be able to obliterate their existence from her memory or from the memory of the Universe. As long as she was able to see past the bones and remember the person's face, their eyes, the sound of their voice, he couldn't really take them away.
Mhavrych looked at the book that she was holding.
"What is that?" he asked.
"This was with him when we found him," Severine said. "We hadn't read it until we came back here from Cassiopeia after not finding the stone."
"What does it say?"
"Just a moment," Rilex said. "You aren't the only one who needs to hear this."
Mhavrych stepped up to the table and looked down at the body. It was the first time that he had really seen it stretched out that way and he found himself fascinated by it. There was something powerful about seeing the lingering reminder of a life stretched before him. He often lost value of the significance of time. He moved through the portals, passing the years and the streams, not noticing the lives that were happening around him. He rarely stopped to think about those who lived more linearly and what it was like for them to fill such a brief moment in existence.
"What's happening here?"
A shaking woman's voice made Mhavrych turn toward the door to the infirmary. George was standing in between two human women, both looking terrified and confused.
"Mhavrych, this is Valerie and her daughter Samira."
"I have heard of both of you," Mhavrych said.
It seemed like a strange sentiment, but it was all that he could bring to mind to connect with them in that moment. They seemed to understand and both of them nodded, but looked at George with confusion and questions in their eyes.
"What are we doing here?" Valerie asked.
Mhavrych realized that she hadn't yet seen the body on the table and he felt the compulsion to continue blocking her view of it. He knew that they wouldn't have brought these women here unless they had a connection to the body, and when they realized what was there and what they were seeing, he knew that it was going to be painful for them. He didn't want them to have to go through it until the last possible moment. He stayed where he was as George stepped forward.
"When Rilex and Severine were in the tunnels, they discovered a body," George started gently. "It was skeletonized. It had been there for many years, at least a century. They brought it back here and asked for me to examine it and find out what I could about it. In my examination I came to the conclusion that this man is human."
"Yes?" Valerie said. "Is that all? You found a human body? I won't be able to tell you anything about it. I'm not a scientist or a doctor. There are other humans here that will know much more."
She sounded almost frantic and though her daughter didn't seem to have picked up on the emotion that her mother was experiencing, Mhavrych realized that Valerie knew something. Even if the thoughts and fears hadn't been fully realized in her mind yet, they were there, in the very back of her consciousness, telling her that something was wrong.
"Why have you brought us here?" Samira asked, sounding defensive. "We're going through enough right now."
"Please," Rilex said. "There's something that I think you both need to hear."
He glanced back at Severine, who opened the book that she had been holding to her chest. She held it tenderly, not wanting to damage the crumbling, aged pages. She hesitated, drawing in a breath and swallowing deeply before she began to speak.
"I know that they will find me soon," she read. "I have done everything that I could, but I fear that I have made mistakes that will soon cost me my life. I can only hope that I make it back to where I will be found. I will soon visit Cassiopeia for what I know will be my last time. I have searched for the stone so many times, but have never been able to find it. I don't believe that I will this time, either. What I hope is that I will see Jiri one more time. The last time that we met, he told me about the Heart of the Temple. That is the most powerful stone, the piece of the temple that links all the others. Before the war, before Jiri and Layla defected to avoid being permanently evacuated, Malan told him that he had seen a glimpse of the secrets the temple held. He knew that it was the Heart of the Temple that would be at the greatest risk. It would one day be embedded in pure evil, its purity concealed by an unimaginable darkness. I believe that was the stone that was buried, that Valdin didn't know what he had and that he put that stone aside to be used later, but never had a chance to recover it. If I have the chance to see Jiri again, I hope he will confirm my suspicions. I have already delivered the page to Aegeus. I hope he will know what it means if I am not able to explain it to him.
I pray that I will get through this, but if I don't, I want to say goodbye. First to my wife. My darling Valerie, I have loved you every moment and I will carry you into eternity. You are my greatest strength. And to my daughter, Samira. You have been the delight of my life. In your short time on Earth, you have given me greater joy and pride than you will ever know. Whoever finds this book, if I am not able to give it to them myself, please be sure to give this to them along with my love. Know that if I am found and this book finds its way back into their hands, I have been successful. Martin Roe."
The air in the room was still. It seemed that no one was breathing. Finally, he heard what sounded like a soft sob and he saw Valerie step forward. Samira reached for her, but she ignored the attempt to stop her and crossed the infirmary to the table. The woman who had just emerged from the hell of her own life on Earth and was trying to rebuild, trying to find anything to grasp so that she could move forward, stared down at the bones that lay across the shining metal surface and a tear-filled smile came to her lips. It was a reaction that Mhavrych wasn't expecting, but one that touched him.
"My Martin," she whispered. "You've come back to me."
"She never had a chance to say goodbye," Samira explained. "She didn't have a body to bury, so she has never been able to really mourn for him the way that she should have."
"But he's here now," Valerie said. "He's here. He's safe." She looked up, meeting the eyes of the people around her as if she thought that she needed to reassure them that she was fully in the moment and understood what was happening. "I know that he's gone," she said. "This doesn't change that my husband is dead. But I can touch him. I can be close to him again. I know that he didn't die in that fire. He didn't burn up and then get tossed away like trash. That was unbearable to think about. I couldn't imagine the precious body of the man I loved so much being cast into the recycling fields and processed with the remnants of his car. It was a thought more horrifying than I could ever tell you to think that parts of him had been made into other cars, that he was melded inside of a reminder of what killed him for the rest of eternity. Now I can rest knowing that that didn't happen."
"I don't understand," Samira said. "How could have all of this happened? How could he have lived this whole other life without my mother ever knowing?"
"We've read more of his journal," Rilex revealed. "I'm sorry if that feels like an intrusion."
Valerie looked up and shook her head.
"No," she said. "No. Tell me. Whatever it is that he wrote, he intended for me to know. He didn't realize how long it would take or what I would go through to get here, but he intended those words for me. I need to hear them."
"He worked with Aegeus, Casimir, and the original resistance. He was put in a time prison before Nyx 23 where he encountered Frederick and a man named Etan. Your husband uncovered a plan to destroy the Nyx 23 crew and got himself hired as the pilot so that he could stop it, but he wasn't able to get to the meeting point in time. Etan took his place. It's because of his instructions that the crew didn't crash in a place that would put them right into the hands of the Covra. The plan didn't go exactly as intended, but the work that he did undoubtedly saved countless lives."
"What happened to him?" Samira asked.
"His entries aren't entirely clear, but we think that he escaped from the prison and was uncovered as a spy. The Valdicians and the rogue time prison wardens pursued him. Ryan's family and then Ryan knew how much of a threat he was. They faked his death on Earth in your time and continued to pursue him through the past. We don't know what he means when he says that he gave the page to Aegeus, but we believe that he did make it to Cassiopeia and found that the stone had been removed, but before he could do anything about it, he was wounded. He traveled to Penthos where he went into the tunnels and chose the place for his death, hoping that his body wouldn't be found by any of the hybrids. Whatever work he was doing with them, it's obvious that he hoped all of us would make it to Penthos one day and find him."
"I know," Samira said.
Her voice had a hint of awe in it, like she had just come to a realization that she knew was going to change everything.
"What? You know what?"
"I know what he means. I know what he means by the page."
"You do?"
"When we came here and met with Ivy, she told us that she found something in Aegeus's war room and when she and Ellora opened it, it was a page from an old patient file."
"Why would that matter?"
"I don't know. She doesn't know what it means."
"We need to see it. We need to talk to Ellora."
"Can I stay with him?" Valerie asked. "Just for a while."
Mhavrych saw emotion soften Rilex's face.
"Of course," he said. "Take as much time as you want."
********
"Where is my child?" Ryan roared.
He smashed another of the empty bottles, sending pieces of glass scuttling across the floor.
"We haven't found them, Sir," Declan said. "We don't know where they went."
"How can you lose so many people?" Ryan asked. "How could they just disappear?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry, sir."
"Ilya is carrying my child. It will be born soon. I want that child, Declan. That child is my greatest legacy."
"The Valdicians who fought them during their escape said that Aubrey, Jonah, Ilya, and the others were with an older man. They think that it might have been Frederick."
"Frederick?" Ryan asked. The anger had become a simmer, like a burning ember in his belly. "You are only now mentioning this to me?"
"They weren't positive, sir. They thought that it might be, but we didn't think that it was our place to suggest that if we weren't positive."
"Your place is to tell me everything and to make sure that I know anything that has happened that might have anything to do with my plans." He started to strike at Declan, but then stopped. A thought had formed in his mind and his anger dissipated, quickly replaced by amusement. "Frederick," he whispered. "I know where they are."
"You do?"
"He brought them back. He took my child and brought it back to when he broke Martin out of prison. We'll find them, and I will have my child back."
********
"He found us."
Jonah burst into the living room and Frederick got to his feet, dropping the book that he had been reading back to the table.
"What do you mean?"
"Ryan figured out that we came back here with Ilya. There are Valdicians asking about us. I remember this happening. I can't believe I forgot."
"What do you mean?"
"Before the mission, strange people who I had never seen approached me on campus and asked about a woman named Ilya. Of course, at the time I didn't know anyone by that name, so they moved on. I saw that happen today."
"Jonah, I told you that you can't get near your younger self. You could cause so much damage."
"I know, but what am I supposed to do? My wife went to work at that factory so that she could steal the information from a species that would just as soon kill her as look at her. I can't just sit by and not do anything to try to protect her. Now I know that Ryan has somehow found out that we are here, and he is after Ilya."
"I got it."
Aubrey ran into the room, her satchel clutched to her chest. Her face was high with color and her eyes were wild. It looked as though she had been running.
"You got it?" Frederick asked.
"Aubrey, I need to tell you something."
"What did you find?" Frederick asked.
"I got into the head Valdician's office and found a book that detailed the plans for the mission. You were right. They intended for the ship to crash somewhere else so that they could immediately be taken by the Covra. They expect for the ship to arrive on Penthos and mean to attack before the crew is able to get out, implement the weapons, and send it to Uoria."
"Aubrey," Jonah said.
"What?" she asked, turning sharply to him.
"Ryan knows that we are here."
Her face dropped slightly.
"He knows?"
Jonah nodded.
"Valdicians were on campus today asking about Ilya."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "They weren't supposed to be able to find us."
"Aubrey, think about this. All along people have thought that the work of the Valdicians didn't start until the military liberated the planet. We know that's not true. The factory was already open. The Izalux was already in production. Teaming up with the military was just a convenient step for them. There were already plans in place. I don't know how they did it, but they made the connection with Ryan and now he knows that Ilya is here."
"I have three days. I have to bring these to Etan. We need to keep her safe for three days."
"You're going to be alright."
Ilya drew in a breath and closed her eyes, trying to will the pain to ease out of her body. Mordecai walked along beside her, his hand rested on her back. Every time that she stopped, he pressed into her back, stroking it encouragingly. The pain eased, and she continued to pace, savoring the moments between the contractions.
"Where is she?"
"She's still at the doctor," Jonah said. "She should be back any minute."
Almost as though his words had beckoned her, the door opened, and Aubrey rushed in. She was smiling, but the expression faded when she saw Ilya.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Ilya is in labor," Jonah said.
"Did you do it?" Mordecai asked.
Aubrey nodded.
"Did you see Etan?"
Frederick walked into the room and Aubrey took a few steps toward him.
"I did. I left the papers for him in the examination room and when he left, he confirmed that he got them."
"That was dangerous."
"But he has them. That's all that matters. There's something else that I need to tell you."
"What is it?"
"The doctor that I saw today, there's something about him. I encountered him at the medical ward before and there was something about him that always bothered me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Today, I realized it."
"Realized what?"
"I saw him at the factory. When I first started working there, I saw him. But he wasn't dressed like a doctor. He was there with Ryan's grandfather. They walked around the floor together and seemed very friendly."
"Why would a doctor from the University medical ward be at the factory?" Mordecai asked.
"I don't know," Aubrey said, shaking her head. "But it has to mean something. He's strange. I don't know how else to describe him. There's just something about him that isn't quite right. Like he's constantly hiding something from everyone, but he's out in the open."
Ilya felt another pain cut through her and she reached for Mordecai, crying out with the intensity of the contraction. She knew that the baby was coming quickly, and the fear was increasing with every moment.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, looking up at Aubrey. "The baby is coming. Ryan is going to come."
"No," Aubrey said. "I won't let that happen. Ryan isn't going to get to the baby. I promise."
"How can you promise that? He wants this child. He will find a way."
Aubrey looked at Frederick, then back at Ilya.
"Not if he doesn't know what he's looking for."
"What do you mean?"
"He knows that we're here. He doesn't have the courage to come back in time because he's afraid he's going to change something that will ruin all the work he's done, but he has sent Valdicians to look for you and for the baby. He would never look in clear sight."
"We need to bring the baby somewhere else," Frederick said.
"Some time else," Aubrey said. "A time when he would never think to look for his own child."
"Will she be safe?" Ilya said.
"She?" Aubrey asked.
Ilya nodded.
"I know it's silly, but I feel like the baby is a girl. It's like she told me." She rubbed her hands over her belly, feeling tears beginning to form in her eyes. "I didn't want to feel like her mother. I knew that Ryan was going to take her from me, and I really hated the idea of raising a child that is part him. But the longer I've carried her, the less I have been able to resist loving her. Now that I know that she's coming, it is breaking my heart to think about not raising her. Maybe that's why I know that she's a girl. She let me know so that in the little time that I have with her within me, I can be connected to her."
Ilya looked at Aubrey and noticed her staring at her, her eyes wide and her mouth open slightly.
"What is it, Aubrey?" Jonah asked.
Aubrey was visibly shaking as she reached out to touch Ilya's belly.
"It's me," she whispered.
Ilya felt a shock rush through her and she struggled to come up with something to say.
"What?" Frederick asked.
"It's me," Aubrey repeated. "Ilya's baby. It's me."
"What do you mean?" Jonah asked.
"I just said it. We need to bring the baby where Ryan would never think to look for his own child. Where better than when he was barely more than a child himself? No one ever knew who left me on Nana's porch. I barely had anything with me."
Ilya walked over to a desk at the side of the room and opened the drawer, pulling out a small package wrapped in paper. She brought it back to Aubrey and held it out to her.
"But you were in this."
Aubrey took the package and opened the package, finding the exact gown that she had discovered in the attic of Nana's house when she was a child. She nodded and looked at Frederick, whose hand covered his mouth as he stared at Aubrey. Another pain took Ilya and she felt her knees buckle. Aubrey supported her under one arm and Mordecai took the other, helping her into the bedroom. She lay back against the pillows and looked at Aubrey again.
"Why Nana?" she asked. "Why should I leave my baby -- leave you -- with Nana?"
"She's my mother," Frederick said. "She raised me. You can trust her."
"She's more than that," Aubrey said.
Ilya saw her look at Jonah, the expression on her face saying that she was waiting for him to realize something.
"I don't understand," Ilya said.
"Nana kept a book about Nyx 23 that she said belonged to her mother. She said it was the most precious of her belongings and would spend hours looking at it. There was a picture in it of every member of the crew. One was rough because she had spent so much time stroking it."
"Me," Jonah said.
"The love of her life."
"Her husband who died a few years before her."
"Nana is your daughter," Frederick said.
Aubrey nodded.
"In two weeks, Jonah will get on the StarCity and go to Uoria. We won't be here. We have to go to another time. When we're in that time, we will have a baby girl and we will raise her so that one day she will raise a man named Frederick who will continue the work we are doing now."
"And so that one day, I along with my wife, who I will lose far too early, can help to raise a baby girl we find on my mother's doorstep. My daughter. My grandmother."
"Yes."
Aubrey looked at Ilya and stroked the side of her face.
"It's alright. You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to worry about me. You won't get to raise me, but Nana will, and now we will always be together."
Aubrey felt emotion tightening her throat painfully as she waited in the car for Ilya to place the basket on the doorstep of Nana's house. She wanted to go inside. She wanted to see Nana and hug her, to tell her one more time that she loved her. But the woman who was inside wasn't the woman Aubrey knew. Not yet. She was younger and didn't yet know Aubrey. But soon she would. Soon she would open her door and discover the newborn, vulnerable in the night, and bring her into her arms and into her heart. In that moment, Nana was still reeling from her mother's death. She had no way of knowing that she had truly just gotten her back. At the same time, Aubrey's time on Earth had just ended and was only just beginning.
Tears were pouring down her face by the time that Ilya got back into the car.
"What do we do now?" Jonah asked into the tense quiet of the car.
"Go back," Aubrey said.
"To Nana's house?" Jonah asked.
"No. To right after I was born. We need to go to the factory."
"Why?"
"All those bottles of Izalux in the medical ward. It doesn't make any sense. Why were they there? There was a whole factory. They could have kept the bottles there. When I was working there, I found out why they created artificial starlight. It is to feed the Valdicians. It keeps them strong."
"So why do you want to go to the factory?"
"There has to be a reason for the Valdicians and Ryan's ancestors to keep the bottles in the University. They want to protect it because they don't think it's safe in the factory any longer. Think of the machinery. It's abandoned. The whole factory is barely used. It shut down for a while. It was under a major threat."
"What are we going to do to the bottles in the factory?"
"Destroy them all."
********
Dear Nana,
I have just watched a newborn baby be placed on the doorstep of a house that she will always consider her home. She was left by a woman whose heart is breaking, but who also knows that she is doing what is right for her child. That woman then came back to the car where I was and I held her, comforting her as she cried the tears of a mother who would never be able to watch her child grow up, but also tears of relief and happiness because she knows that baby will grow up and will grow up safe, strong, and raised by the most wonderful woman who could have ever raised her. You.
That baby was me, Nana, and I was here to watch it happen. I wish that I could go inside right now and explain it all to you. I wish that I could have handed the baby to you and explained to you just how important you would be to her, to me, and how important you still are. I know that I won't be able to see you again, but you are just at the beginning of being with me. There are so many amazing memories that we will make together, and I will have the life that I have because of you.
You won't read this until well after I have left and long after all of this has happened, but there are things that I want you to know, that I feel that you need to know. I hope that you have heeded my warnings and followed my instructions not to open this letter until the date on the envelope. If you read it too early you might be tempted to change things that could lead to disaster. But I know that you will do as I ask, because I raised you to. As I write this, you are still in my future. Your father and I will soon make one more journey through time and settle ten years from now. We are already planning on having another wedding and have asked the hybrids who have become so dear to us to help us create new traditions for it. We are already married, but this is a chance for us to celebrate the life that we have built together and the new one that we will live into the future. Sometime after that, you will be born. I will never tell you who you really are or the story behind our family. That is something that must unfold in the way that it was meant to without any interference. But I will love you. I will love you more than I could ever explain. I will love you both as my daughter and as my future grandmother, and when your son Frederick is born, I will love him as my grandson and as my future father, the man who adopted and raised me alongside my mother, who I can now tell you has been killed.
I want to tell you more about me, to answer questions that I know that you have always had because I've heard you ask them, and I have asked them myself. Now that all of this has happened, I can answer them for you. You are to keep this to yourself, Nana. Hold it inside of you and tell no one except for the hybrids who are still in your care. There is still danger, and no one can know about me if we are all to be safe.
First, I want to tell you about the woman who carried and delivered me. It's hard to think of her as my mother because I still think of that word when I consider the woman who raised me along with you. This, though, is the woman who conceived me and carried me, loving me even though she often questioned if she did and if she would ever be a good mother. Her name is Ilya and she is young and beautiful. In fact, I worked with her in the University for a very brief time before she left. I didn't know that she left because she had gotten involved with Ryan and their relationship ended very badly. She believed that she was going to marry him and that they were going to have a life together. She thought that they were going to have a family together. She already knew then that they were going to have a baby because she was already carrying it. Me. Ryan is my father. It still horrifies me to think about it and I struggle every day to come to terms with the idea that it is his blood that runs through my veins. At the same time, though, I know that because he is the man who sired me, I am one of the most powerful weapons against him. He wanted to find me as a baby because he wanted to be able to use me in his experiments and in the siege that he was planning against the entire Universe. But he would never be able to get his hands on me.
That is why we brought me to you, Nana. Ilya knew that she wouldn't be able to protect me the way that she should and that I would always be vulnerable to Ryan as long as he knew where I was. We knew that the only way to keep me safe and to prevent him from raising me to destroy was if I was right in his plain sight, but he didn't know. You know Ilya. You know her story because she is one of the women who you helped to rescue from the facility that Ryan created. What you didn't know is that she wasn't bred. She never was. She was only there so that Ryan could eventually have me to control. When their relationship ended, and Ilya discovered that she was pregnant, she went to Ryan at the factory and told him, thinking that it was going to win his love for her. She walked into that factory so willingly, so hopefully, truly believing that as soon as he found out that she was carrying his child he would change his mind about their relationship being over and want them to live their lives together. But that wasn't what happened. Ryan was furious that she would come to him that way and that she would even think that they would ever be together.
You see, Ryan never saw an equal. He never saw a single being in his life who he thought was even close to being on the same level as he was. That was one of the main motivations behind creating the hybrid army. Even the Valdicians, the ones who had once been so powerful and were led by the ancestors he worshipped, had become weak and disillusioned. He controlled them with the Izalux, never allowing them near true starlight and keeping them monitored, but giving them enough of the doses of the artificial light that he could manipulate them and force them to fight for him. I don't pity them. They are as bloodthirsty and cruel as any who came before them, they just don't have the same power or strength. To Ryan, the thought of this woman, this young woman who was no more than one of many scientists in a lab, would think of herself as worthy to stay in his life forever and be his partner was not just laughable, it was offensive. He saw that idea as Ilya questioning his dominance and his magnificence. She wasn't acknowledging that he was so far above everyone else that he didn't need to answer to anyone, and certainly didn't need to have one woman throughout his entire life.
But he still wanted to get me under his control. So, he took Ilya and he put her into the facility with the women he had bred. Rather than treating her better because her baby had been conceived rather than designed, he treated her worse. He was aggressive and cruel, vicious in the way that he treated her, but always mindful of how what he was doing would impact the baby that she carried inside of her. He made sure that I always had the protection and support of the most advanced of his machinery so that he could do whatever he liked to Ilya while knowing that he wasn't going to harm me.
Ilya is incredibly brave, Nana. She went through her pregnancy hating that she had produced a child with someone so evil, but also wanting to protect me. She always hoped that there would be some way that she would be able to keep me safe and not let me become just another part of Ryan's plans. And she did. She did the hardest thing that any mother could ever do. She sacrificed the opportunity to raise me. She kept me in her arms for just one day after my birth before we left me with you. All the years that we celebrated two birthdays for me? We were right.
The one comfort that Ilya has is knowing that we will now be able to go through life together and that I am with you.
Today was harder on Frederick than I would have thought that it would be. I want you to know that your son is an amazing man. I know that you have questioned many times whether you raised him correctly and what you could have done that would have made him a better father. Please know that you did nothing wrong. In fact, having you as a mother meant that he was able to do the things that he needed to do. He has saved more lives than I can even tell you. He has ensured the persistence of time and has been instrumental in the protection of the Universe. He was able to do all of that because of you. Because you gave him the strength and the courage, and because he knew that the child he loved was in good hands with you. He wishes that he could have told you more about what he was doing when I was growing up. He told you everything that he could without risking all that he was doing. Know that he is unendingly grateful to you and that he will continue his work, but that we are together. Though I know who he will one day be, in my heart and my mind right now, he is only my father and that is what he will remain until the next chapter of my life has begun.
I miss you, Nana. My memories of you will always be the grandmother I loved more than anything and who gave me the unquestioned, unending, unparalleled love that ensured I would one day be who I am. The only reason that I was able to raise you the way that I did was because of the way that you raised me. It will be something that neither of us will ever fully understand, but know that I am thankful for it, and for you, every day.
I love you.
Aubrey