“You're going to be a wonderful father.”
I laughed nervously.
“How do you know?”
She smiled.
“Because you're already worrying about doing it right.”
For the next five years, we built a beautiful ordinary life.
We worked.
Raised Ava.
Visited family.
Argued about the thermostat.
And took turns staying awake when our daughter was sick.
Then Grace was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
At first, we believed treatment would work.
We talked about next summer.
About travel.
About Ava starting school.
And about the house we hoped to buy when my company became more stable.
But the treatments became more difficult.
Grace grew weaker.
Then one afternoon, a doctor sat beside us and began discussing what the remaining months might look like.
I remember staring at the hospital window.
There were cars moving in the parking lot.
People walking toward appointments.
Someone carrying a bouquet of flowers.
The world continued as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
But I knew our lives had changed forever.
Grace died the following spring.
Ava was five.
The hardest part wasn't the funeral.
Or the paperwork.
Or coming home to a house that seemed too quiet.
It was explaining to a little girl why her mother wasn't coming back.
For weeks, Ava asked whether Mommy could visit for just one more bedtime story.
Sometimes she brought one of Grace's sweaters to school because she said it smelled like her.
Other nights, she crawled into my bed and held my hand until morning.
I would have given anything to take away that pain.
But I couldn't.
So I learned to live beside it.
My sister Naomi helped.
She was five years younger than me, a public-school teacher with endless patience for children and almost none for adults who behaved foolishly.
She brought groceries.
Picked Ava up from school.
Helped organize the endless collection of forms and appointments I kept forgetting.
And occasionally ordered me to shower when I had spent too many days moving between work and home without remembering which one I was supposed to be doing.
Naomi loved Ava like her own child.
And Ava adored her.