“Daniel. We barely know each other.”
“I love you,” he said. “And I won’t lie to you. I’m scared. More than anything, I want to know that when I’m gone, Lily will be with someone who loves her.”
By then, I already loved her.
I said yes.
“Marry me.”
We married in his hospital room.
I wore a white sundress, and Lily wore yellow and never let go of my hand.
Before the wedding, Daniel had already signed the paperwork naming me as Lily’s guardian after his death.
***
Two weeks later, he died.
Lily and I moved into his house, into a quiet that felt like somebody holding their breath.
We married in his hospital room.
That first year was hard.
We grieved him through burned pancakes and two-in-the-morning nightmares, but slowly we built things that belonged only to us.
Friday pancakes shaped like whatever Lily demanded. A car song with made-up words. A way of sitting on the couch with our feet tangled together.
Then, a year to the day after the funeral, Lily walked into the kitchen while I was stirring soup.
That first year was hard.
She’d been quiet for days.
She held a small box in both hands.
“Dad told me to give this to you today,” she said. “Before he died, he showed me where he hid it in the back of his closet. He made me promise not to touch it until today.”
“Okay, baby.”
She’d been quiet for days.
“I’m supposed to say something too.” She took a breath. “You still have no idea why he chose you.”
The hair on my arms stood up. I wiped my hands, sat down, and opened the lid.
Mr. Bunny lay in the box.
A scream tore out of me before I could stop it.
I knew him instantly.
I wiped my hands, sat down, and opened the lid.
The fur was worn thin on his belly where Josie used to squeeze him. His left ear still had the crooked stitch I’d sewn at the kitchen table one night after she went to sleep.
And there on his tag, in green marker, were her wobbly initials.
I couldn’t breathe.
A scream tore out of me before I could stop it.
I pressed him to my face. He smelled like dust and cedar, and under that, so faintly, like nothing at all.
“I’m sorry!” Lily was crying. “I didn’t know! I didn’t open it, I promise!”
Then I saw Lily backing toward the wall, frightened by my reaction. She was six years old, crying over something she didn’t understand.
“Lily. Lily, look at me. You did nothing wrong. Not one thing.”
I saw Lily backing toward the wall
“Then why are you screaming?”
“Because… because I don’t understand how your dad could possibly have this.”
I looked into the box again, and that’s when I saw the letter.
My name was written on it in Daniel’s slanted handwriting.
My hands shook so badly as I started reading that the paper rattled.
