The Sound of Forever

Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Keane

Day Sixty

Today, the anger feels quieter. It’s still there, simmering beneath the surface, but it doesn’t consume me the way it used to. For the first time, I let myself think of her, my little girl, without bracing for the ache to rip me apart.

She should be six years old.

Six.

She’d be in first grade by now, walking into her classroom with a backpack far too big for her little frame. I can see her, turning back to flash me that wide, toothy grin that could brighten the darkest day. I bet she’d already have her favorite color. She’d insist on wearing everything with that color. She’d have a favorite song, the one she’d sing at the top of her lungs, getting all the words wrong but not caring. Her favorite bedtime story, one she’d demand every single night until we knew it by heart.

I wonder if she’d still hold my hand on the way to school, her fingers small and warm in mine. Or would she have already started pulling away, eager to show me just how grown-up she was?

I can almost hear her laugh—bright, untamed, happy. I can picture her running through the house, her hair flying in every direction, her energy unstoppable. Would she have loved art like her mom? Music like me? Or would she have found something completely different, surprising us both at every turn?

These thoughts used to destroy me. They felt like opening a wound that could never close, a pain too raw to face. But now, they’re all I have. The life she should have lived, the person she should have become—they exist only in my mind. And I’m terrified that if I stop thinking about her, I’ll lose that, too.

Can you mourn someone who never had the chance to exist outside your hopes and dreams? Can you grieve a life you tried so hard not to think about because the pain was too much? Can you miss someone you never met?

I don’t have an answer. Yet here I am, tangled in the guilt, the questions, the endless spiral of what-ifs.

The therapist says I should try to remember her with love, not just loss. But love and loss feel inseparable, like two sides of the same coin. Still, I’m trying. Maybe this is how I keep her with me—by holding onto the dreams of who she could have been, by letting myself love her fully, even if it’s only in my memories of what might have been.

I miss her in a way I never imagined. I’ll always miss her. But today, I’m holding onto the love. For both of us.