Amara came bounding out of the lobby a few minutes later, mouse ears back on her head, asking if we could stop for one more round of soft-serve before we hit the highway, and Andre scooped her up into a hug that lasted a beat longer than it needed to, his eyes closed over her shoulder, memorizing something.
We stopped at a little roadside stand an hour outside Coral Bend, and Amara ate her ice cream in the back seat with the window down, chattering about the teacups and whether Princess Elara’s castle was bigger than the one in her storybook at home. Andre answered every question like it was the most important thing anyone had ever asked him, and maybe, in that moment, it was.
We drove home to Cedarhurst with the windows cracked and Amara asleep against the door by the second hour, humming some half-remembered tune from the park even in her sleep. Andre reached over and took my hand across the console somewhere around the state line, and I let him, because whatever came next — for her, for him, for the family the three of us had built out of two people who never should have had to grieve their way into finding each other — we were going to face every bit of it the same way we’d gotten through those five days in Coral Bend.
Two weeks later, we sat Amara down together on the living room couch, her rabbit tucked under one arm the way it always was, and told her the truth about her dad the way he’d wanted to tell me — gently, honestly, with room left over for her questions. She cried, and then, in the particular way ten-year-olds sometimes surprise you, she reached over and took both our hands and said, “Then we better take lots more pictures.” Andre laughed for the first time in what felt like weeks, a real laugh, the kind that used to fill up our kitchen before any of this started.
I still keep that envelope from Bettina in the drawer of my nightstand, note and all. Some nights I take it out and read it again, not because I need reminding of what he did, but because I need reminding of who he’s always been — a man who spent his whole time with us trying to take up less space, right up until the very end, so the rest of us would always have enough room to hope in.
