green velvet, it was clay. I had done the basics, trueing up the sides and making sure the lid was snug, but Lily had added fingerprints and thumb spots, and splashes of color, a bird of sorts, and three rabbits, all of which I’d topped off with a rainbow and stars. The idea, she excitedly told Edward after it was glazed and fired, was that she could write anything she wanted and put it inside—wishes, secrets, notes to me or to him or to her friend Mia.
My tactic, of course, was to get her to write. But she hadn’t lived long enough to learn how, much less to fill the box with wishes, secrets, or anything else.
So I had filled it with her ashes.
My strength vanished. I could take photos, dolls, and beloved shreds of a sleeper, but not my daughter’s ashes. Granted, they were sealed in a bag. They might have been sealed in ten, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They were Lily in the flesh, or what was left of the flesh after the flames had done their thing.
In that moment, I would have done anything not to have cremated her. But the idea of her body lying alone in the ground had been way too brutal. I wanted her in a gentle, loving place, and she was, but even this was brutal.
Hurriedly, I tried to replace what I’d taken out so that the clay box was buried again, but it wouldn’t comply. Through a blur of tears, I mounded papers over it, and still it glared at me. I pushed it deeper, using both hands now to thicken the cover. When I could still see a corner, an edge, even a bright pink spatter, I thought to use my scarf to hide it. Desperate, I began tugging and yanking, nearly choking myself in my haste before an end finally came free.
From behind came Edward’s arms, his hands closing firmly on mine. “Stop,” he said in a broken voice.
Despite the warmth of him against my back, I couldn’t begin to think CALM thoughts. “I can’t—that box—I have to—”
“Shhh,” he whispered as he pulled my hands away from my neck, “shhh, baby.”
Twisting, I raised my eyes. His lips were a thin slash in his beard, his cheekbones severe over skin washed of color. And his eyes? Usually that startling pale-blue, they were flooded with grief.
Had he cried when Lily died? I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember. He must have, but with me? Possibly not, if he had wanted to keep a strong front. And then there was the public spectacle that our daughter’s death had quickly become.
Edward was strong. There had been arrangements to make, and I was useless. I knew he grieved; I had seen it etched on his face, ever more deeply as the days without Lily dragged on. But tears? I don’t recall seeing tears. Had he cried when he was alone, which increasingly he had been, since I was emotionally gone?
When the criminal case exploded and his stoicism remained, I interpreted it as anger, and we had gone downhill from there. I wondered now if I had been wrong. I wondered if stoicism had been Edward’s own personal form of anguish.
If so, that had changed. Here in my little cabin, with the velvet box open and the remains of Lily’s life laid out, it wasn’t my suffering versus his grief. We shared the sorrow now. For the first time, we were absolutely, totally together in this. For the first time, it wasn’t about how Lily had died, but the simple fact of her loss. Perhaps being apart had given us the space for this. Perhaps, over five years, our grief had taken its natural course, gradually evolving into something we could live with. Perhaps we were simply new people.
Whatever, his tears were my undoing. My own suddenly came in a torrent, gathering in my heart and erupting past my throat with such force that when they reached my eyes they had nowhere to go but out. Edward barely had time to turn me into him when I broke into gut-deep, soulful sobs. I had no control at all. Clutching handfuls of his black turtleneck, I held on for dear life, helpless to stop what was happening—not trying to—not wanting to. And that was okay. Because he was crying, too. I felt it in the convulsive way he held me, in the tremors that came from deep within him and the strangled sounds that escaped his throat.