Chapter 18 - 2:17 A.M.
On the third anniversary of Lily’s death, I woke before two in the morning.
I made tea.
Sat by the window.
Rain tapped the glass.
2:14.
2:15.
2:16.
My heart began to race.
Then 2:17 arrived.
I waited for the room to disappear.
For the ICU monitor.
For the doctor’s voice.
For the feeling that the world had split open.
Nothing happened.
I was still there.
Tea in my hands.
Rain on the window.
A quiet house.
2:18.
That was the minute David had declined my final call.
For years, I believed it belonged to him.
It didn’t.
It belonged to me now.
I had survived both minutes.
At the cemetery later, I sat beside Lily’s headstone.
“You would be ten,” I said.
I told her about the fund.
Two hundred sixteen families helped.
I told her I still hated peas too.
I told her I finally learned how to stop apologizing when I was not wrong.
A little girl passed with her mother.
She read the name on the stone.
“Lily.”
Her mother gently guided her away.
I smiled.
Before leaving, I touched the top of the headstone.
“I miss you.”
That would never change.
Some things should not.
As I walked to the car, my phone buzzed.
My body reacted before my mind did.
Then I looked.
Rachel.
Dinner tonight? No legal emergencies. Promise.
I laughed.
Boring days.
I texted back.
Yes.
At home, I turned on Lily’s moon-shaped lamp.
Soft light filled the second bedroom.
I no longer avoided calling it her room.
It was her room.
It was also a room in my house.
Both truths could exist.
That was something grief had taught me.
Love could stay.
Life could continue.
May you like
Neither canceled the other.
And for the first time since the hospital, I believed I was allowed to be happy again.
