Page 126 of Never Forget
She held it up.
Five figures. Holding hands. Sarah and Jack in the clouds, both of them with wings, both of them waving. Jamie, me, and Rosie on the ground. All five connected. Jamie was holding Rosie's hand, and Rosie was holding mine, and my stick-figure arm reached up to Jack's.
I couldn't speak for a second.
Jamie's hand slid into mine.
"It's beautiful, sweetheart," she said to Rosie. Her voice was steady. "Daddy's going to love it."
"I know." Rosie put it carefully back into the file. "He's going to love it so much."
We ate. We drank lemonade out of paper cups. Rosie found a grasshopper and spent ten minutes trying to convince it to climb onto her finger, and when it finally did she held her hand very still and watched it for a long time before she lowered it back to the grass.
Jamie leaned against my shoulder.
We stayed another hour. The heat rose. Rosie fell asleep on the blanket with her head on Jamie's thigh, Biscuit tucked against her stomach, the grasshopper long forgotten. Jamie stroked her hair. I watched the shadow of the headstone move an inch across the grass.
Jack would have loved this.
He would have sat on this blanket with us, drunk the last of the lemonade without asking. Made a joke about how badly I played guitar and then asked me to play something anyway. He would have watched his daughter fall asleep on his sister's lap, put his hand on my shoulder and said something that didn't need saying.
He wasn't here.
I was.
That was the shape of it. That was the thing I was going to carry for the rest of my life. The best man I'd ever known was in the ground three feet from my boot, and his family was on a blanket beside me. I was the man who got to sit with them.
Jamie lifted her head.
"We should head back."
"Yeah."
We packed up. I carried Rosie to the car. Jamie folded the blanket and carried the cooler. At the edge of the grass, Rosie stirred against my shoulder and lifted her head and waved at the sky over my back.
"Mommy and Daddy keep the sun bright for us."
"Yes, they do," Jamie said.
We got her into the car seat. Jamie's hand found mine on the console as I pulled out of the cemetery drive.
"Some of the guys are getting together tonight for Sean's birthday."
She glanced at me. "Don't stay out too late."
"Yes ma'am."
She smiled and squeezed my hand.
She didn't let go the whole drive home.
The bar was the way it always was.
Sean was in the corner booth with a beer in each hand, holding court for a group that kept growing, telling a story I'd already heard twice this week and would hear three more times before the night was over.
Tyler was at the dartboard with Elena.
He was missing the target entirely. She was leaning against the wall beside him, laughing so hard she was wiping her eyes. Every time he threw and missed, she laughed harder, and every time she laughed, he threw worse.
