Chapter 55 - Tessa
We had slowly found our rhythm as the two of us. Well, in between all the visitors and helping hands.
It was a combination of soft breaths, long nights, tears from both of us... The rhythmic creak of the floorboards as the world settles for the night.
I ease myself into my dad’s recliner, the one that now has Maggie's quilt draped over it, the familiar creak greeting me like an embrace I didn’t realize I still remembered. I still needed. Elodie whimpers against my collarbone, her tiny fists opening and closing, her lips searching.
“Okay, little love,” I whisper. “I’ve got you.”
Her warm weight settles into me as she feeds, her breath puffing softly against my skin. The lamp in the corner glows low, turning the nursery golden. Someone, Eli, probably, cracked the window earlier, and the late summer night drifts through, warm and sweet.
I look around the room that once shattered me and now somehow stitches me together.
The hand-painted horses above her crib.
The small bookshelf waiting for stories to be told.
Nate's framed jersey hangs above the dresser.
And on the table beside me, the wooden box Eli showed me the day everything changed, the box full of letters.
I reach for the top envelope.
The one I keep coming back to.
His handwriting is a little messy, rushed, probably written between farm chores or practices, when he was still figuring himself out, figuring us out.
I unfold the page slowly, careful not to upset Elodie, who doesn't like mealtime interrupted.
Tessa,
I don’t know how to say this out loud yet. Maybe I’m still figuring out who I want to be when the noise fades. But when I think of my future… I always see you in it.
You on a porch.
You laughing.
You waiting for me.
I don’t know what I did to get that picture in my head, but it feels like home. Like something I want more than anything else.
I hope I get to tell you that someday.
— Nate
Elodie shifts, letting me know she is done. I put the letter back on the top of the box and move her higher onto my chest, slowly rubbing her back, her little hand stretching, only resting when she lands over my heart.
“Yeah,” I whisper, pressing my lips to her head. “I know. I love you too.”
I close my eyes and focus on her tiny breaths, and then I let my mind wander to the life he dreamed of, the one he had envisioned for us.
Elodie lets out a soft, sleepy burp that makes me smile.
I breathe her in. The soft, sweet scent of milk. I take in her warmth on my chest.
And I know that life won't ever be as I had planned or even as he had.
It will be something new, something hopeful for Elodie and me.
“You’ll never know him the way I did,” I whisper into her soft hair.
My voice cracks, then steadies. “But you’ll know the parts of him I loved the most.”
I shift her in my arms so I can see her face, tiny, perfect, impossibly a mixture of ours.
“Because they live in you.”
Her fingers curl around the edge of my top, tiny but fierce.
Outside the window, dawn is just beginning, a thin line of light brushing the horizon.
It feels like hope, like a beautiful future that hasn't been planned out, but that is waiting for the two of us to discover together.