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The idea of his heart breaking on my behalf makes me sob in the same way I did when Ingrid said my dad had taken his last breath. I start crying again, my body summoning tears from some unknown reservoir of pain after all the usual wells have been drained dry.

I knew it was coming too and yet I feel completely caught off guard

Him: Of course you do. You’ve never not had your father so there would have been no way to be ready for such a reality

Kind, eloquent Elijah. He is too good hearted to be a lawyer. I need to tell him this in a hopefully not-so-distant future when I am able to laugh again.

I can’t believe it’s reality. I just don’t believe it

Him: There is no rush to believe. Give yourself time

Bask in the denial. That’s what he’s advising. Linger in this stage of grief. The others may be even more arduous.

Him: Can I do anything? What do you need right now?

I have no idea.

Him: Do you want to meet at the park tonight?

I don’t know if I do, can’t seem to get a grasp on anything at all in this moment, but I respond anyway:

Ok .

Him: I’ll meet you there at the same time. And if you change your mind, that’s okay too.

Thank you. You’re so good to me

He sends me three red hearts in return.

Kyle responds ten minutes later. I am lying flat on the couch. Merry and Frank are still busy moving various things into the hallway from what will forever be known as the room where my dad died.

Him: Ugh, how you holding up?

Not well

Him: How’s Merry?

We’re both having a hard time

Him: I wish there was something I could do

There is, I want to say. You could say tender things like Elijah. You could offer to fly up with the girls and hold me.

Him: Should I send flowers?

Is he asking me for guidance on etiquette? Requesting my help with an appropriate gift in this situation? Is there no time I can be free from being his wife?

I don’t know, Kyle. Why don’t you google how to be thoughtful after a father-in-law dies?

Him: Ok . I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say

Don’t say anything then. I’m used to that

Him: Nic, come on. I’m sorry. You know I’m terrible with things like this

Things like this? Like death? I don’t think anyone is good at death, Kyle.

Him: Look, I’m obviously fucking up here. I’ll call you later if that’s ok?

I don’t respond. Maybe if he calls later, I’ll just blurt it out once and for all: I want a divorce.

Tears come again when Frank leaves. It’s strange that he has been part of this deeply profound part of my life and I will never see him again.

I don’t even know his last name. I could ask him for his contact information, but I think we both know that any ongoing correspondence is unlikely.

I will miss the essence of him, but will want to distance myself from the memories he elicits.

“Take good care of yourself,” he says before walking down the front steps, steps last traveled by the mortuary workers who took my father away.

“You too.”

Back inside, I find Merry in the walk-in closet of the room where my dad died. It is a closet they’ve always used for storage. She is standing on her tippy-toes, reaching for a giant box on the top shelf.

“Need help?” I ask.

I’m a few inches taller than her. She doesn’t admit to needing my assistance, but doesn’t protest when I pull down the box for her.

“What is this?” I ask.

It’s a cardboard box, formerly white and now yellow. It weighs at least twenty pounds. I place it on a table that was the makeshift hospice-supplies table until Merry completely cleared it earlier.

“Photos,” she says. “We should pull out some good ones of him. I’ll want to do a slideshow at the memorial service. Do you know how to do that?”

I carefully take her wrists with my hands and turn her toward me. I look into her sad, tired, frantic eyes and say, “Merry, we don’t have to do this right now .”

Her eyes dart away from mine, unable to keep focus.

“I know, I know. I just want to.”

She instructs me to pull down the other boxes in the closet, five in total. She removes all the contents, begins making piles on the floor.

“Are you hungry?” she asks when all the boxes are emptied.

It’s just about five o’clock. We didn’t think to eat lunch.

“I am,” I say, perplexed by the stubbornness of my appetite at a time like this. My dad has died, my world has tilted on its axis, and my stomach continues to growl, reminding me of the necessity of life going on.

“I’ll make some pasta,” she says. “You stay here, start looking through photos.”

I don’t particularly feel like bringing on more tears, but I comply anyway.

I sit in the chair next to where my dad’s hospital bed used to be and open a forest green leather album.

There are photos of my dad as a twentysomething.

Quite a strapping young man, I would tease him if he were here.

Is he still here in some way? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t googled theories on what happens when people die.

Many believe there is a window of time when a person who has died is still lingering, preparing to transition to the other realm.

It’s like checking out of one hotel and into another.

Someone wrote that in an article I read online. I like that idea.

I flip through the album. There are photos of my dad with my mother, Rose, the woman who carried me and gave birth to me and then died when I was too young to formulate any lasting memory of her.

I wonder if there is any truth to the idea of dead people reuniting on “the other side.” I wonder if my dad is with her now, if they are hugging and laughing and dancing a jig.

I doubt Merry would want any photos of my dad with his first wife at the memorial, so I close the album and move to place it back in one of the piles on the floor.

When I do that, though, something slides out of it.

It’s a black-and-white composition notebook.

It literally falls into my lap, and I can’t help but think my dad is, in fact, here.

I open it.

September 16, 1984

Dear Diary,

Ha. Dear Diary. Look at me, acting like an eleven-year-old schoolgirl.

I didn’t even keep a diary when I was an eleven-year-old schoolgirl.

It never occurred to me to keep a diary until just now, at age twenty-eight.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I think motherhood is the necessity of invention. My thoughts have to go somewhere.

A few paragraphs in, it becomes clear that this is my mother’s journal, Rose’s journal, started in 1984, just months before she died.

I start to flip through the notebook and realize it’s mostly blank.

There are only five entries, the date of the last one being February 1985, right before the accident.

I read.

And read.

And read.

Rob,

I’m leaving you this diary.

So you understand that it’s not your fault. Or Nicole’s.

This life is not for me. I wish it was.

I stand from the chair, my instinct to run, go somewhere, do something. The journal falls to the floor. I have to sit again. I feel like I have vertigo, like I may pass out or throw up or both.

Merry comes into the room, saying, “Should I make a salad?”

When she sees my face, the color leaves hers.

“Nicole, what’s wrong?”

Her eyes go to the floor, to the journal.

Does she know? Has she always known?

“Oh,” she says.

And then I know that she knows, that she has always known.

She comes toward me. “Nicole, I’m so sorry. I can explain,” she says. “He saved it because he was going to tell you and—”

“Why?” It is the only word that will come.

I stand, the room still spinning around me, my legs wobbly. Noodle legs, my dad used to say after his runs. My feet don’t feel like my own, but I will them to move anyway.

I leave the room and then the house, grabbing the car keys on the console table on the way out. Merry’s voice is behind me, sounding like it’s coming from underwater: “Nicole!”

But I keep going.

I will drive to Elijah. I can’t wait for him to come to the park later. I need to see him now.

My father is dead.

My mother never was.

My father is dead.

My mother might not be.

Elijah will think I’ve lost it. But he will hold me anyway. That’s what I need. That’s what any of us need. To be held.