Tucker looked down.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he reached toward the photograph.
“Can I hold it?”
I hesitated.
Then I handed it to him.
He held it carefully between both hands.
He studied Sarah's smile.
Then he looked at me.
“That makes you sad.”
I nodded.
“Every day.”
He considered that.
Then he reached over and placed his small hand on mine.
“Then you can feel sad with me.”
I stopped breathing.
The room seemed to disappear.
I could hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.
I could hear a car passing outside.
But everything else became quiet.
Tucker looked at me with the uncomplicated understanding only a child can offer.
He wasn't trying to fix my grief.
He wasn't telling me to be strong.
He wasn't promising that the pain would disappear.
He was simply offering to share it.
Eight years earlier, I'd lost a little girl who used to crawl into my lap whenever I looked unhappy.
She would place one hand against my cheek and ask whether I wanted to talk.
Sometimes I said no.
She always stayed anyway.
Now another child had made the same offer.
I lowered my head.
Tears spilled onto my beard.
Tucker looked worried.
“Bear?”
I nodded quickly.
“I'm okay, buddy.”
He studied me.
Then he shifted carefully toward the edge of the sofa.
“Come here.”
I moved closer.
He wrapped his arms around my neck.
I held him gently.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then Tucker whispered something against my shoulder.
“Maybe Sarah can be on our team too.”
I closed my eyes.
I had spent years believing that allowing myself to love another child would somehow diminish what Sarah meant to me.
I had never said that out loud.
But the feeling had lived inside me, quietly shaping every choice I made.
I avoided birthday parties.
I avoided children's hospitals.
I stopped visiting friends whose children were the same age Sarah would have been.
I convinced myself that grief was proof of loyalty.
If I stopped hurting for even one afternoon, I felt guilty.
If I laughed at a child's joke, I wondered whether I was forgetting her.
Now Tucker was asking whether Sarah could belong to our team.
Not as someone replaced.
Not as someone forgotten.
As someone whose memory still mattered.
I looked at the little white star.
Then I nodded.
“Yeah, buddy.”
My voice broke.
“I think she'd like that.”
Tucker smiled.
“Good.”
Then he handed back the photograph.
“Can I show her my motorcycle?”
I laughed through tears.