Christmas ornaments.
Their wedding album.
Emily's baby book.
Vanessa had been quietly packing Sarah out of their home.
On top sat an envelope.
TO DONATE.
Nathan sat on the garage floor.
Emily stood beside him.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you mad?”
“Yes.”
She looked worried.
“Not at you.”
“Okay.”
He pulled her close.
A week later, Nathan returned every photograph.
Not all over the house.
He did not turn grief into a museum.
But Sarah regained her place.
Emily's mother did not need Vanessa's permission to exist in memory.
Neither did Nathan's wife need to compete with a dead woman.
That was something he understood now.
Vanessa had never actually been fighting Sarah.
She had been fighting the idea that love could exist without being exclusively hers.
Three months after the canceled wedding, Vanessa agreed to meet Nathan with attorneys present.
He almost refused.
Then he decided he wanted one question answered.
They sat across from each other in a conference room.
Vanessa looked thinner.
Tired.
No makeup.
She stared at the table.
Nathan placed Sarah's locket between them.
“Why?”
Vanessa looked at it.
“I already apologized.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“I lost control.”
“Not the slap.”
Vanessa looked up.
“All of it.”
Silence.
“Why did you want Emily gone?”
“I didn't want her gone.”
“You paid a boarding-school deposit.”
“She would have come home on holidays.”
“She's six.”
“It was an excellent school.”
“Stop.”
Vanessa flinched.
Nathan continued.
“Why were you reading her trust documents?”
“My father suggested I understand the family finances.”
“Why did you access my life insurance twenty-seven times?”
Her face changed.
“I was planning to be your wife.”
“Why impersonate me to the nanny?”
“I knew you'd undermine me.”
“Undermine you?”
“You never backed me up.”
“I didn't know there was anything to back you up about.”
“That was the problem.”
She leaned forward.
“Everything with Emily had to be gentle because Sarah died.”
“She was six.”
“Everything had to be Sarah would have wanted this. Sarah used to do that. Sarah bought this. Sarah chose that.”
“She was her mother.”
“And I was supposed to live in her shadow forever?”
Nathan stared at Vanessa.
“You were jealous of my daughter remembering her mother.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted a place in the family.”
“You had one.”
“Not the place I wanted.”