His eyes locked on something in the front yard, his mouth frozen around what he had meant to say. Beside him, was Jamie, jumping ecstatically, as Moe stood up with the cigarette between his fingers.
“I can't believe it's still here,” he muttered, walking down the porch steps and across the winter brown grass, to the bird bath in the center of the yard.
Jamie was on his heels the whole time.
Curiously, I watched him, not daring to follow father and daughter, as he crouched to the circle of rocks surrounding the old stone bath. It had been right where it stood ever since my parents bought the house twenty-four years ago and wore its age gracefully. Not a chip or stain marred its etched surface and the same could be said about the rocks that surrounded it. Our parents had forbidden us from touching it as kids and not a single rock had been turned in over two decades. Until now, as Moe knelt beside the circle and lifted one specific stone.
He turned it over in his hands, brushing away the dirt from its surface. A single tear trickled down his cheek and he hastily swatted it away, leaving a smudge of soil in its wake. Then, he smiled and came back to the porch.
“My Jamie gave me this rock for my last Father's Day,” he said, using her name for the first time, giving me all the confirmation I no longer needed. He turned the rock over and showed me the message written in worn, but still legible, marker.
I love you, Daddy. Love, Jamie
My heart sat heavy, weighing against my lungs and gut, and making it so difficult to breathe. I was trapped. Caught between wanting to do the right thing and wanting to keep her to myself forever. What if I never left? Couldn't she and I live happily together, until I died? But then, reason asked, what happens to her after Moe dies, or hell, after you die? I didn't know the answer. Would she be trapped here for all eternity, or would she, by default, be set free once her tether to this earth was severed? Was I really willing to find out? Was I truly that selfish, to ignore her silent pleas and keep her here, when I had set so many others free? Hadn't she waited long enough?
The battle against my emotions was lost as I looked at the pleading eyes of my friend and released a sob.
“Andy?” Moe's hand drooped to his side, still clutching the rock. “Baby, what's wrong?”
I closed my eyes to his concern and let the images speak. “She found that rock in the woods across the street, before they tore them down and built the houses. It reminded her of you, of when you'd take her camping by the lake. She saw it and brought it home.”
Moe remained as silent as his daughter, and I continued, pulling at another image, another piece of proof.
“It was you that did her hair, not your wife. Jamie thought it was funny, how you were more like the mommy and your wife was more like the daddy, with the good job and all the money.”
That brought a hushed chuckle. “My wife was a surgeon, and when we had our first daughter, we decided I'd be a stay-at-home dad.”
I nodded, opening my eyes to find his stare pinned on me with a cocktail of astonishment, sadness, and speculation swirling around in his misty eyes. Jamie stood beside him, smiling with so much warmth and just a dash of sadness and I knew that smile was for me.
“You have blamed yourself for too long for what happened,” I stated, holding Moe's unrelenting gaze. “She has never, ever blamed you. But she has always felt sad for what happened after. She hates that she was the reason you and your wife divorced. She hates that you ruined your life, because of her.”
There was no attempt to stop the tears as they began to fall from his big, brown eyes. His gaze left mine as he searched the ground, the sky, anywhere she might have been. I smiled at his attempt to catch any glimpse of the daughter he thought he'd failed, and I reached out, touching his hand.
“She's beside you,” I informed him gently, and he looked at me, bewildered, as he nodded.
These moments never failed to amaze me. The ease in believing. The willingness. Moe turned to look in the