PART 3

Two weeks later, Cecelia was born after a quiet, uncomplicated delivery.

When the nurse placed her against my chest, she tucked her thumb into her fist.

Mark had slept like that too.

I laughed through tears.

“Of course you sleep like your father.”

When Violet came to meet her, she stood beside my bed nervously.

“Can I hold her?”

That question mattered.

I handed Cecelia over.

Violet stared down at her.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

Cecelia yawned.

Violet smiled through tears.

“I knew your daddy when he didn’t have teeth either.”

For one minute, grief stopped fighting us.

Then, a few weeks later, I heard Violet talking to Mark’s aunt in my living room.

“Mark wasn’t himself at the end.”

I stopped in the kitchen.

“Sally handled those decisions. He never would’ve chosen that if he’d been thinking clearly.”

I walked into the room.

Violet was holding Cecelia.

“Give her to me.”

Her face changed.

“Sally, I was only—”

“Give me my daughter.”

She handed Cecelia back.

I held her against my chest.

“You will never say that in front of her again.”

“She’s a baby.”

“She won’t always be.”

Violet’s eyes filled with tears.

“You still have something of him.”

I stared at her.

She looked at Cecelia.

“You wake up every morning and see him in her. What do I get?”

“Me.”

Violet froze.

“You had me.”

Her expression crumpled.

“I loved you too, Violet.”

She covered her mouth.

“You’ve spent weeks making me the enemy because that’s easier than accepting that Mark made a choice you couldn’t control.”

She shook her head.

“He wasn’t himself.”

“He knew you would say that.”

Violet looked up sharply.

“What?”

I reached for my laptop.

“Mark left me something.”

Her face went pale.

“If he had something to say, he should have said it while he was alive.”

“He did.”

I pressed play.

Mark’s voice filled the room.

“Donation was my choice.”

Violet closed her eyes.

“Mom, if you’re hearing this, you’re probably furious. You loved me before anybody else did. But loving me doesn’t mean you get to decide which choices belonged to me.”

Nobody spoke.

“Don’t make Sally prove that she loved me by agreeing with you.”

Violet covered her mouth.

“And don’t put Cecelia in the middle. She isn’t something I left behind. She’s Sally’s daughter and mine, and she gets to become herself.”

“Turn it off,” Violet whispered.

I did.

Then I looked at her.

“I want Cecelia to know you.”

Violet began crying.

“But you will never tell her that I made her father do this. And you will never make her responsible for how much you miss him.”

Violet wiped her face.

“I don’t know who I am without him.”

“Neither do I, Violet.”

I looked down at Cecelia.

“This is harder than anything I’ve ever done.”

Then I kissed my daughter’s forehead.

“But she doesn’t need us to know yet.”

Six months later, Violet sat on my living-room rug while Cecelia wrestled with a wooden block.

Our relationship wasn’t magically repaired.

But it was healing.

Violet asked before visiting now.

She asked before picking Cecelia up.

And when she missed Mark, she said she missed Mark instead of turning that grief into something Cecelia or I had to fix.

That afternoon, Cecelia grabbed the block so tightly her knuckles turned white.

Violet smiled.

“Look at that grip.”

I laughed.

“Just like Mark.”

Violet looked at me.

Then she looked back at Cecelia.

For a second, I saw the old instinct return.

The need to find her son in every little thing our daughter did.

Then Violet slowly shook her head.

“No.”

She gently touched Cecelia’s tiny hand.

“That’s hers.”

Cecelia squealed and threw the block straight into Violet’s lap.

Violet laughed.

So did I.

And for the first time since Mark died, neither of us needed Cecelia to prove that he was still here.

We could miss him.

We could love him.

And she could become entirely herself.