“Laura,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to see this. I didn’t want you to have to carry it again.”
“Greg.” My voice shook. “What is that. What are you burying.”
He looked down at the bundle in his arms.
And very gently, he folded back a corner of Michael’s blue baby blanket.
Inside was not what my terrified mind had built.
It was a small wooden box.
Hand-carved. Old. The kind of thing you’d keep something precious in.
“It’s her box,” Greg said. “It’s Grace’s box.”
And the world tilted, because I knew that name, even though we had not said it out loud in almost thirty years.
Grace.
Our first baby.
The one we lost.
Before Michael. Before Emma. A daughter, born too soon, who lived for two days in a hospital and then didn’t, thirty years ago, when we were young and shattered and had no idea how to hold a grief that size.
