The Love We Found (The Light We Lost #2)

Chapter i

i

SOMETIMES I WAKE UP AND, FOR A brIEF MOMENT , you are alive, Gabe. In that blurry place between dreams and reality, you’re smiling, your arms are wrapped around me. You’re saying, “I love you, Lucy. I will love you until the day I die … and then some,” just like you whispered to me when we went hiking in Cold Spring two decades ago. We’d climbed to the top of the Bull Hill trail and were taking in the most breathtaking view of the Hudson River. Your whispered words, the reverence with which you said them, made me shiver, made me lean back, turn my head and kiss you, hard and deep, like I needed to show you that I’d love you until the day I died and then some, too.

I forgot about those words for years, but they’ve come back to me recently. Come back to me in those liminal moments, when I’m not quite asleep, but not quite awake.

And then the sun brightens, or the alarm goes off, and it hits me. You’re gone.

I wonder, particularly on those days, about the “and then some.” Is there a piece of you somewhere that loves me still? Or is it all in the past? Are we ancient history, and am I the archivist, keeping it alive?