“He always bought backups of things he liked.”
I picked it up.
A thin crack ran along the base.
Something rattled inside.
“What’s that?”
Mom frowned.
We turned the vase over.
A folded piece of paper slid from beneath a felt pad glued to the bottom.
My name was written on it.
Dad’s handwriting.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then I opened it.
There were only two lines.
Hannah,
If you ever have to choose between keeping the peace and keeping yourself, disappoint everyone except the woman you have to wake up as tomorrow.
Love, Dad.
I read it twice.
Then once more.
Mom covered her mouth.
I looked at the garden.
At the wet soil.
At the small green tomato plants trembling in the spring wind.
At my mother alive beside me.
I thought about the grocery bag.
The broken vase.
The missing money.
The photographs.
The recorder.
The courtroom.
All the things Dad had tried to protect me from.
And all the things he could not.
For months I had believed the night Brandon slapped my mother was the night my marriage ended.
It wasn’t.
My marriage had ended much earlier.
I simply hadn’t known yet.
That night was something else.
It was the night the door opened.
I placed Dad’s note back inside the blue vase.
Mom and I carried it upstairs together.
Then we set it on the windowsill where the morning sun could reach it.
And for the first time since my father died, nothing in my life felt missing.
