Chapter 51 - Tessa #2
A crib sat against the far wall, smooth and sturdy, clearly handmade. A mobile hung above it with little horses and stars turning slowly in the light breeze from the open window.
On one wall, a jersey hung in a simple frame.
Nate's.
My breath left my lungs in a rough, stuttering exhale.
Beside the recliner was a small wooden table with a lamp. On the table sat a box. Not fancy, just sanded pine, the lid slightly ajar.
Eli knelt in front of me, his knees creaking against the hardwood.
“We were going to wait,” he said. “On all of this. On showing you. We thought… after the baby came, maybe. When you were ready.”
“I’m not ready,” I whispered hoarsely. “I’ll never be ready.”
“I know.” His eyes shone. “That’s why I had to stop waiting for perfect timing. Because grief doesn’t give us that. Hell, Tessa, life doesn't give us that.”
He reached for the box and lifted the lid. Inside it were neat stacks of letters.
The ones on the left were familiar, my own handwriting on the envelopes. Dad scrawled in shaky ink. Letters I’d written to the man whom I desperately wanted to feel connected to.
The ones on the right stopped my heart.
They were thicker. Longer pages, some folded, some in envelopes, some crammed on hotel stationery. And every single one had my name on it.
Tessa.
Tess.
Red.
Written in Nate’s handwriting.
I couldn’t breathe.
“I found them when we were going through his stuff at the farm,” Eli said softly. “He had them in his duffel bag in his bronco during the accident. It took us a while to go through it, because we thought it was just clothes. But when I opened it up and saw the letters. All of them were for you.”
A sob tore out of me, sharp and animalistic.
“I can’t...” I gasped. “I can’t read those. I can’t do this, Eli.”
“I know that is what you think, Tess.” Eli’s voice shook. “But you need to. You need to know he was trying, Tess. Even when he was fucking it up in real time. He was trying to put himself back together, and he wanted you to know every little bit of it.”
My hands hovered over the box and then retreated, like it was hot.
“I thought if we put your letters to your dad and his letters to you in the same place,” Eli said, “it might give you somewhere to put all of it. All the love. All the hurt. Somewhere that isn’t just weighing you down.”
“I’m so mad,” I whispered. “I’m so mad at him. At you. At everyone. At God. At hockey. At the road. At the ice. At the fact that I still wake from nightmares, hoping it was all just a dream and then remember he’s in a wooden box in the ground.”
“I know.” Eli’s eyes flooded. “Be mad. You get to be.”
“Eli... the baby...” My voice broke. “I’ve barely felt her.
I’ve barely… looked at her in the ultrasounds.
I don’t remember the last appointment. I just know people keep telling me to eat and take my vitamins, and I do it because they tell me to, and I…
” I covered my face with my hands. “I’ve already failed her. ”
“Hey,” he said sharply, gently prying my hands away. “Look at me.”
It took effort to drag my gaze up. When I finally met his eyes, they were fierce.
“You have not failed her,” Eli said, voice low, steady.
“Your body has carried her every day through hell. You’ve kept her safe even when you didn’t want to be in your own skin.
You showed up to appointments when you didn’t want to get out of bed.
You breathed when you didn’t think you could. That is not failure. That is survival.”
Tears streamed hot down my cheeks.
He swallowed, glancing at the jersey on the wall, then back at me.
“I miss him,” he said, voice cracking. “Every damn day. I miss my brother. I miss the way he used to annoy me on purpose just to see how fast he could get me to snap. I miss his stupid victory dance in the kitchen when he stole the last piece of pie. I miss how when he first started playing, he used to call me at two in the morning after a win just to tell me some play-by-play I already saw on TV.”
My bottom lip trembled.
“And I am terrified,” Eli continued, “that the way we lost him is going to take you too. Not your body. You’re stubborn.
You’ll outlive us all. But this part,” He touched his fingertips lightly to my temple, then my chest. “The part that laughs. That loves. That looks forward. We need that part. I need that part. And so does she.”
His hand dropped, hovering over my belly, hesitant.
“Can I…?” he asked.
I nodded, throat too tight to speak. He rested his palm over the curve of my stomach, his touch warm and careful. We stayed like that, the three of us, in a triangle of grief and love and silence.
And then she kicked, hard, right against his hand. We both startled.
A breathless laugh burst out of Eli, choked with tears. “Well, hi there, little one,” he whispered. “You got some fight in you?”
The second kick came, and then the third. Like she was agreeing with Eli, like she was saying I’m here, I’m here, pay attention to me.
Something inside me shifted and then cracked. Not the sharp shatter of the night on the highway, not the hollow breaking at the hospital... something… else.
Like a frozen river shifting under the first thaw.
I pressed my hand over Eli’s, over her, over the tiny heel pushing up under my skin. I felt her strength. Felt her insistence. Felt the truth of what I hadn't been able to see.
She was real.
She was alive.
She was half him, half me, and entirely herself.
Eli leaned forward and pressed his forehead to mine for a second, his voice rough.
“We’ve got you, Tess,” he murmured. “Mom, Dad, Kenz, me, Chase… hell, even Adam and the boys from Nate's team. We’ve all got you. You will never be alone. But she...” his hand pressed gently against my belly, “needs you to come back to us. Even if it’s slow. Even if it’s messy. Just… come back.”
He pulled away, stood up, and kissed the top of my head.
“I’m going to go help unload the truck,” he said quietly. “Take your time. No one’s going to come in here unless you invite them.”
He left, closing the door softly behind him.
The room was very quiet.
Just me.
The chair.
The crib.
The jersey.
The letters.
And the baby.
She shifted again, slower now, like she was settling.
I looked around at the hand-painted flowers, the little horses running along the wall, the mobile turning lazily, the framed jersey that felt less like a shrine and more like a promise that her father had fully existed in this world.
With trembling fingers, I reached out and ran my hand along the arm of my dad’s recliner. The fabric was worn soft and somehow familiar.
I realized, with a jolt, that I hadn’t sat in this chair once since coming back. I’d stood near it. I’d glanced at it. I’d skirted around it like it was a gravestone. But I hadn’t let myself sink into it. Hadn’t let myself remember.
Slowly, I let myself relax into it. My body fit into the grooves carved by years of my dad’s weight. It held me as it remembered me.
A sob tore free, but I didn’t fight it this time.
I let it come. I let all of it come. For the life I lost when my mom took me away from here.
For the life she forced me to live, the dad she didn't let me love, and for how she left me.
I cried for my dad, for everything I had lost. I cried for Nate and the future he dreamed of, that we would never get to live together.
My hand shook as I picked up the first stack, my letters to my dad. I chose one near the top, my name scribbled in the corner, the date blurry from where a tear had once fallen.
I opened it, and I read.
I remembered the girl who had written it. She was so lonely, raw, and desperate to talk to a man who wasn’t there. I felt every word as if it were brand new and years old at the same time. But somehow, teenage me still tried, she still reached out, she still hoped.
When I finished, I set it back in the box gently.
My eyes slid to the other stack.
Nate’s handwriting stared back at me. Terror and longing wrestled in my chest.
“Okay,” I whispered to the empty room. “I can do this.”
I picked the first one up, unfolded it, and as I started to read his words, his real words, the ones he hadn’t filtered through contracts or cameras or fear.
For the first time since he died, I let myself feel everything. Not just the rage. Not just the emptiness. All of it. I didn't try to filter or analyze my feelings. I felt them.
I knew I needed to do better for our daughter.
This new life that terrified me and tethered me to the world all at once.
And as I read, as my tears fell onto paper and sank into ink, I realized something simple and brutal: If I stayed numb, I would lose him twice.
Once in the crash.
And once in the life I refused to live in his absence.
I didn’t know how to move forward yet.
But in that chair, in that room, with my baby rolling under my hand and Nate’s words in my lap, I finally wanted to try.