If Lily wasn’t part of it, she was forgotten. I couldn’t let that happen.
In that instant, urgency hit—like I had wasted too much time and was suddenly on the verge of irrevocably losing her. Pulling my hand free, I dashed out of the car and ran through the drizzle to the house. Liam must have let Jonah out before he left, because the dog stayed inside, craning his neck on my thigh when I dropped to my knees and buried my face in cat fur. I felt like it had been a year since I’d been home, not twelve hours.
But I couldn’t linger here, either. These three were my babies, but they weren’t the only ones. Dropping my coat on the newel post as I passed, I was on the stairs when I heard Edward enter the house, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t stop until I was on my knees on the floor by the bed and had pulled out my grandmother’s green velvet box.
I wavered then. There was pain in this box. I had kept it closed these four years not because I didn’t want to see Lily; wasn’t she with me in the dark most nights? But the physical somethings from her life, held in this box, were actual, touchable proof that she was gone. I hadn’t been ready.
I wasn’t sure I was now. But the past seemed destined to pop up, and focusing on loss was limiting. I agreed with Edward. I wanted to focus on the joy my daughter had brought. I did not want to lose her, could not lose her.
Touching the latch, I felt a spark and pulled my hand back fast. Not only grief, I told myself. Beauty, too. I reached out again, but hesitated. Fisting my hands on my thighs, I rocked back and forth, near the box and away, near and away. Then I raised my eyes. Edward stood at the door with his shoulders slumped, seeming as lost as I felt. And suddenly I couldn’t do this alone.
“Help me?” I begged softly.
The question was barely out when he came forward, as though he had been waiting, as though he understood that a mother’s grief—or joy—was different from a father’s, as though he understood that I wasn’t yet ready to make the commitment to him that he was to me but that, in matters of Lily, we were together.
On the floor, in the light of my bedside lamp, the green box seemed etched in amber. He hunkering down and eyed it. “In there?”
I nodded. Reassured by his nearness, I slipped the latch and raised the lid.
The smell hit first. It was my grandmother’s trademark gardenia, conjuring summer and age. Though pale in comparison to the woman herself, it had defied the years by clinging to her letters, to the sepia portraits of her parents and the sketches she had done of my mother as a child, of flowers and friends and the dogs she had loved and lost. I didn’t see these things now, though. They were simply a nest for my daughter.
At my shoulder, Edward’s breath tripped, because there she was looking up at us—Lily Reid Cooper, all blond-white hair, silver-blue eyes, and impish mouth, as real as ever. My chest tightened until he leaned closer. “We can do this,” he said, and although his voice held a quiver, it was determined.
Only then did I realize that this was hard for him, too, and suddenly, being together had greater meaning. He needed me as much as I needed him.
Gratified by that thought, I picked up one photo. “How beautiful she is,” I whispered and, emboldened by that first view, set it aside and went to the next.
“Look at her here,” Edward said, holding another. It was taken by one of Lily’s playgroup moms, who had thought it so special that she’d had it printed. The occasion was a birthday party, the setting a princess bounce house. The camera caught Lily mid-air, her hands and legs askew, her expression the embodiment of glee. She was three at the time.
We had hundreds—no, thousands of digital shots. Most of these physical prints were copies of those we had either given to grandparents or put on our family room wall. I held up one of her grinning around a roasted marshmallow, Edward held up one of her scowling in time-out. I spotted one of her with Edward and pushed others aside to reach it, while he