Violet burst out laughing.
So did I.
And for the first time since Mark died, neither of us needed Cecelia to prove he was still with us.
We didn’t have to search for him in the shape of her hands.
We didn’t have to claim her smile, her stubbornness, or the way she slept.
We could simply miss him.
We could still love him.
We could honor the choices he had made.
And Cecelia could grow into someone who belonged entirely to herself.
Maybe that was what Mark had been trying to protect all along.
Not his memory.
Not his final decision.
Us.
The people he loved most.
He had known grief might tempt us to hold too tightly—to him, to the past, and eventually to his daughter.
So even while he was dying, he had found one final way to remind us that love was not ownership.
It wasn’t deciding for someone.
It wasn’t turning another person into proof that someone we loved had once existed.
Sometimes love meant respecting a choice that hurt.
Sometimes it meant letting go of the person you desperately wanted to keep.
And sometimes it meant looking at a little girl with her entire life ahead of her and understanding that she did not exist to replace anyone.
Cecelia would know her father.
I would tell her about the porch, the terrible baby-name suggestions, the way he always tried to make me laugh when I was frightened.
I would tell her how excited he had been when she kicked beneath his hand.
I would tell her that when he learned he would not have enough time, he chose to give whatever time he could to someone else.
